


For your sake I have braved the glen

by Bellatores



Series: Then if we lost our way [2]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-14 00:24:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4543122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bellatores/pseuds/Bellatores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carmilla POV of 'Should I trust my printer's ink' AKA the Printer AU. Carmilla Karnstein is in her junior year when everything goes to hell in a handbasket, and no, she's not talking about the tiny ink stealing freshman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for the response to the Laura POV, I'm still blown away by it! Thank you to Feel as always for the beta. Title from Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market.

It turns out junior year is a lot like freshman and sophomore year with 75% more stress and 75% less drive to do anything about it. You move Will in on the Sunday before frosh week because your maman is in Cologne on a business trip so you’d had to help Will pack, dirty underwear and all, and mop up his pre-college tears.

He’d appeared at your bedroom door on Saturday night under the pretense of wanting to listen to old vinyls on the record player that lived in your room but he’d soon cracked, sitting on the floor while you’d lounged on your bed. He’d told you a string of fears: ‘what if my frat brothers don’t like me’ and ‘what if my friends from high school never talk to me again’. You tried to remember if you’d felt like this, but the whole ~thing with Ell had made you want to leave this town so much that you hadn’t  had time to look back. Will is different, though.

In that little boy lost voice that shows that he is the baby of the family, he asks if maman will come visit when he’s settled in. You lie through your teeth and tell him yes, she tried to visit me so why not? The thing is, she probably will come and see him before he graduates. Will has always seen the best of her, even when you have not.

It doesn’t take you long to pack up your stuff and shove it in the back of Will’s car, but he takes forever because he’s a typical freshman and has decided to take the kitchen sink to college. His fraternity house is already brimming with people when you get there, hefting boxes, a full sized pool table and... traffic cones?! into the house with all of the jocular banter you wish you could mute.

“Hey Eisen, you didn’t tell me your sister was hot!” shouts some blond frat boy. You’ve only been here two minutes and you’ve barely gotten out the car with Will’s box of DVDs.

“If you touch me, I will eviscerate you,” you say disinterestedly, turning to Will. “Where do you want these?” At least Will has the good taste to look embarrassed. When you say goodbye five minutes later you try to ignore the waver in your little brother's’ voice as you climb in the car, giving him a casual wave but meeting his eyes in your wing mirror. He’ll be all right.

Your dorm is marginally better than your last one, you’d been lucky to get a single and it comes with a large double window opening up onto the quad. You have so little stuff that it doesn’t take long at all to put your room in some semblance of order, already ignoring the ‘no sticky tack on the walls’ rule as your hang up your band posters by your bed.

Positioning your fold-up telescope by the window you wonder if you’ll be able to see the stars at all from here, but the telescope is a comfort, even if you can’t see anything. You’re sliding ‘existentialism: a modern reader’ onto your bookshelf when you get a knock on the door. Great, the welcoming committee.

“Hello! You must be Carmilla! Majoring in philosophy with a minor in space science? Welcome to the floor!”

You don’t reply, not knowing how to take the bubbly girl with her riot of ginger hair and her clipboard. Someone else appears from over the girls’ shoulder. Another ginger, god, they’re multiplying.

“I’m Perry,” continues ginger-clipboard in neat but accented German, “I’m the floor don and I’m over in room 3.1 if you ever need me.” She clearly hasn’t noticed you’re not listening. “I’ve come to invite you to tomorrow’s floor meeting, it’s at 5pm and I won’t keep you long, but attendance is mandatory.”

You stare back at Perry because you’re a junior for god’s sake, you don’t need another garbled version of dorm rules you’re not going to follow.

“What if I’m busy tomorrow?” you say, feigning politeness you don’t feel.

“Attendance is mandatory,” Perry says without any fuss, “but if you have academically related plans we could have a one-on-one discussion of corridor rules some other time that would suit you…”

Oh fuck it, you may as well go to orphan Annie’s meeting and get it over with.

“I’m glad we’ve settled that,” Perry says when you let out a long suffering sigh.

“I recognise you,” says the other ginger, coming out from behind Perry’s back. “You were in Morton’s modern space discoveries last year, right?”

You recognise them now. “Yeah, Lafontaine right?”

“Right, unofficial floor truth-speaker and this one’s room-mate.” They point to an unamused Perry.

“Only because you wanted a double,” Perry replies matter-of-factly. “We should get onto the next room and call back later for the freshmen.”

You can’t have heard right.“We have a freshman?” You reply with what you can only call mild disgust. You’d chosen this dorm because mostly only upperclassmen roomed here.

“Two of them,” says LaFontaine cheerily, “Catch you later Carmilla.”

You don’t reply because you’re too busy scowling.

“See you at the floor meeting?” Perry says, with the underlying tone of ‘you better be there or I will make you regret it’. Huh, that’s usually your gig.

The meeting is as painful as you thought it’d be, mini-Umbridge is overbearingly fastidious and the freshman you’re paired with is far too wide-eyed and enthusiastic. She’s kinda cute though, but it’s not enough to make you care as you listen to pointless facts about herself disguised as ice-breakers.

You’re glad to finally get out, just as your phone dings in your pocket.

 _From: Betty:_ _Party later, see you there Karnstein!!  I’ll text you details!_

Some things at Silas never change, and one of those things was Betty Spielsdorf. You’d hated her on sight, another perfect barbie doll whose life was confined only to the trivial. That was until she’d started providing snarky under-the-breath commentary in your sophomore French class,  now you attended parties together and snarked your way through those too. You can’t be bothered to go through your as-of-yet-unpacked holdall of clothes, so you grab the topmost contents- black leggings and a black and grey checked top and throw them on, stopping for vodka on the way. Party death punch wasn’t your thing.

The party soothes most of your ‘back to college’ anxiety, the low level thrum under your skin that tells you this whole experience borders on surreal, like it’s still June and your summer at home was just a strange dream. It’s nauseating in its familiarity. Zetas chug beer with help from a funnel in the front yard, there is still awful awful music and even worse punch. You find Betty sat on a sofa surrounded by a willowy brunette and a blonde and you join her, holding out the bottle of vodka in sympathy.

“That’s what I’m talking about Karnstein!” she says, taking it from you and producing a shot glass from somewhere before pouring a shot and downing it. One of the things you like about Betty is that she’s not one for small talk, she doesn't ask you how your summer was or what you did, just launches into a conversation about next week’s quad mixer and her hours at the library. It all feels reassuringly normal, so you lean back into the sofa and tell her about the Kierkegaard you’ve been reading lately.

The party is surprisingly tame for frosh week, of course you and Betty spot some freshmen making ‘bad’ decisions, bad being a relative concept, but no-one is passed out on the floor yet and there has been a surprising absence of unsubtle grinding on the rug they seem to be using as a dance-floor. Of course this changes when some summer soc girls pile in, dressed in an assortment of party dresses but also the society t-shirt and shorts combo that marks new members. It’s like watching a nature documentary.

You tuck yourself further into Betty’s side and lower your mouth to just beside her ear. “And here we have the alpha males spotting the alpha females. Not wanting to lose face in front of their female companions the males exhibit their masculinity in hopes of securing a future mate.”

Just as predicted, the zetas become ten times louder, leaning against the table with the beer keg while the girls get themselves drinks. One of the Zetas, not one you’d seen earlier, points you out to a blonde girl wearing a blue spotted sundress.

“Uh-oh,” says Betty, “looks like not all the alpha females are impressed...she’s coming over, trust you to get attention without doing anything Karnstein!”

The girl crosses the dance-floor to where you’re sitting in even confident steps. “Hey,” she says when she finally gets to your sofa. “Kirsch told me you have spirits? I have mixer so I thought we could...trade?”

“What, this?” You pull the vodka out from where it had been resting against your side. “Tell me, besides your unbranded cola, what exactly makes this trade worth my while?”

The girl looks at you for a moment before her face breaks into a grin. “What sort of trade do you propose?” That’s more like it.

“How about a dance and then we’ll call your debt fulfilled?”

“Sure,” agrees the girl, and she gives you the distinct impression she’s trying to act disinterested, you would know, but the way her eyes linger on your lips says otherwise. You leave the bottle of vodka safely in Betty’s care, even though she’s laughing at you (your flirting technique or you in general) and follow the girl onto the rug. The awful music still coming through the speakers makes you cringe.

She doesn’t waste any time, which you appreciate, putting her hands on your hips easily matching the beat of the music. It’s not more or less enjoyable than any dance you’ve had before, but you enjoy her smile and the view you have down her dress. You don’t stop dancing until two songs later, and she trails you back to where you were sitting and she pours vodka and some cola into two red solo cups.

“Hey Elsie, are you coming to play beer pong?” Shouts a SumSoc girl across the room.

The girl, Elsie, shoots you another smile.“Thanks for the dance...maybe again later?”

You sit back down when she disappears, turning back to Betty with a grin.

“You are so full of it, Karnstein.” she says, and you down your drink.

 

***

It’s only been a few weeks but you. hate. this. place.

The floor Don you think you could handle, but the tiny-ink-stealing freshman and her tall lumberjack  girlfriend and that fuckwit Jesse who thinks it’s okay to watch you kiss Elsie outside your door like it’s fucking daytime television...you’re starting to think last year’s bunch of lackwits were better. You have these two situations sorted though. Jesse was easy, he always studied in the floor common room, but the men’s bathroom was down at the opposite end of the hall and the boy guzzled energy drinks like water, so it was his fault for leaving his laptop open. And really, who knew subscribing to a gay porn site through your university email was grounds for the suspension of your internet connection and a meeting with the stern faced I.T man to get it reconnected? The tiny freshman thankfully hadn’t decided to steal any more of your ink, but her annoyingly perky selection of electronic pop at the obscene hour of 9am was equally  infuriating.

It’s officially no-class Thursday, a more than welcome break from your cramped schedule and you’re spending the time wisely with a book when your printer jumps to life. You don’t want to get out of bed, that is the point of no-class Thursday after all, so you crawl to the end of your bed and make the stretch to your printer. Wait...this isn’t yours? You haven’t studied English since the literature requirement in your freshman year, much less poetry. You don’t think you would ever willingly study  poetry. The way professors reduce something beautiful and familiar to a formula makes something simmer in your stomach. The paper is on Rossetti, that means whoever’s paper this is they’re taking Professor Feuer’s ‘Two Centuries of Women's poetry’.  Silas has few professors who see women as people, and even fewer who recognise them as having made significant achievements, a place for innovative scholarship Silas is not. You see the name on the assignment. The freshman, of course. You forget all about your day in bed, stalking over to the door and all but wrenching it open. The corridor is empty.

You only see a sheaf of golden brown hair before you start in on her. She stutters out an apology, but she doesn’t meet your eyes. Her being scared of you is a smart move, maybe the freshman isn’t as guileless as you first thought. The girl garbles an unintelligible sentence about paying you for the ink and you don’t tell her your printer is largely unused but you have to agree with her point about being inept with technology. Who prints something on the wrong printer twice? It’s probably your fancy printer that’s the problem though, it has a million functions you never wanted and could most likely tap dance across the desk with the right combination of buttons. You’ll let frosh squirm though.

She’s just too easy to annoy, all it takes to turn her from apologetic and cowering to clench-fisted and irritated is a well-placed comment about her essay. To be truthful you hadn’t read it beyond the briefest skim, but it was safe, the highlighted themes predictable without getting deep enough into the analysis to merit a high mark from someone with the reputation of the exacting Prof. Feuer.

“You make the link of sexuality as a theme, and yet you don’t follow it through,” you say, going for the proverbial jugular.

She gives you a face that screams bloody murder.

...Bless.

You don’t know why you remember her last name before it is out of your mouth, maybe your tiny neighbour left more of an impression on you than you thought. Annoying her is so easy you almost feel guilty. Almost being the operative word. The poor girl leaves herself more open to attack than a substandard football team, so you line up the next shot, a well-placed jibe about her mammoth girlfriend and watch the anger play out on Laura’s face.

You don’t expect her to play straight into your hands and accidentally tell you how to annoy her like it’s a fine art. She makes a comment about the redhead, Danny, being respectful, and you laugh before you can stop yourself. You’re used to people judging you without knowing the first fucking thing about you. Having a rich adoptive mother in a small town saw to that.

The judgement releases you from any guilt about exploiting her insecurities, which she has served to you on a silver platter. “Is that meant to be slight against me or something? From the way Clifford hangs around you, your essay themes aren’t the only thing you have trouble following through with.”

Of course she bites, hook, line and sinker.

“I don’t think it’s any of your business! Just because you flaunt yours under everyone’s noses doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have some standards.” You’re lucky any remaining fucks about people’s opinions of your sexual exploits went out the window long ago, otherwise you’d probably be smarting from the comment.

“Look. Carmilla, I’m sorry, that was a disrespectful thing to say, you’re free to make whatever life choices you want.”

You don’t expect her to...look sorry about it? It’s even funnier that she thinks she can validate your life choices and you’ll suddenly skip through the glen together like she doesn’t have a ginormous stick up that well-formed ass of hers.

You’re too tired to formulate any complex rebuttal, the rest of no-class Thursday is calling your name, so you go for the old Danny argument and watch as her face crumples. You dismiss her by turning your back to her. Going back to bed is beginning to lose it’s lustre, but then you remember you have a whole series of new space documentaries that were a Christmas gift from Will. You hear your door shut, finally alone again.

 

***

Fucking Fuck everything to hell. You get out of your Monday philosophy class and your eyes smart and you’re pissed and it’s all you can do not to kick a trash can like an angry child.

The C- on your paper is wholly undeserved.

Unfortunately, professors have opinions and unfortunately, your professor’s opinion is wrong. On one hand, you could have stuck to his analysis and written your paper accordingly, but your argumentative streak got the better of you once again. And now you’ve paid for it.

When you get to college you can have your own opinions, you remember being told. Not so much. Then again maybe it’s your lack of maturity that stopped you from regurgitating Professor Crabtree’s old argument like you should have done to get a good mark.

The pointlessness of it makes your brain hurt, what was the point of setting the papers in the first place if all professors wanted was the same old argument? You may as well have no capacity for independent thought at all.

The worst thing is you have two more classes today, you nearly say fuck it and slink back to bed and to be honest you don’t know what stops you. You ask Alona in your next class if there’s any parties tonight. Summer soc girls can always be counted on to know where the parties are. She gives you a smile and an address. That’s more like it.

By midnight on Monday night you’ve forgotten all about the paper. You’ve forgotten most of anything that doesn’t involve the tequila shots Greg from your space science class is pouring you and the drunken conversation you and Alona are having about impressionism. You find yourself leaving the party about an hour and a half later, the three of you beelining for the only campus bar not usually occupied by freshmen, the Screaming Weasel, and give death glares to one out-of-place frat boy, one girl with green hair and no volume button and one leery old man before you get to the bar.

Three beers later you find yourself publicly defaming Professor Crabtree, but the conversation morphs into a discussion about how Professors take longer to give you back your marks than time given to write assignments. You have another beer before deciding to head home, getting out of the booth awkwardly and attempting to cross the bar.

“Hey, Karnstein!” yells Greg when you’re three steps away. “There’s a show at the Troubadour tomorrow, you in?”

You end up getting tipsy the next night, bass reverberating in your bones while a sea of people jump up and down mindlessly in the room around you. The atmosphere is safe and dark, a humid, sweaty sort of comfort that takes your mind off the fact you’re rapidly recalling how hard college is and how much it’s like walking up a playground slide in socks. You had been happy being faceless, leaning up against the wall with a drink in your hand where it won’t be spilled by the crowd, but you get talking to the girl stood next to you and soon you’re kissing her against the wall, waking up the next morning with her imprint in your bed. One good thing though, you forgot about Crabtree’s class all night.

You don’t go to class the next day.

In the evening you go to yet another house party with Alona and drink a truly spectacular amount of whisky, before getting pizza at 2am and eating it in your dorm room. You end up sitting on the floor among the boxes, giggling over some joke you won’t remember later when she kisses  you, alcohol sloppy and warm. It feels easy, familiar. You’d had a thing last year, nothing serious, but enough that her touch on your arm feels comfortable and her lips on your chest feel oddly relaxing. Floor sex isn’t something you would recommend. Afterwards, your back aches and your ass is  numb so you’re grateful when you finally haul your drunk asses into bed.

One of the best things about Alona is she sticks around. She also makes you coffee, so you go to class the next morning not hating the world, well, as much as your hangover will allow.

The next week goes on in  the same way. You get a noise complaint which you find hilarious, write embarrassing comments on Will’s drunken facebook photos and thank the many gods you don’t believe in for the fact you’re grouped in your Planetary Geology team project with the only other people who have a clue what they’re doing.

You’d deny it if anyone asks, but the group project is awesome. The corkboard in your room becomes littered with post-it notes with possible avenues of research and printed pictures that always catch your eye as you walk past. The dorm situation settles into a weird sort of normality, you keep yourself to yourself and team ginger and the freshman next door do too…  but you expect she’s moping after that truly ear splitting shout-off she’d staged with her giantess of a SumSoc girlfriend.

Midterms come way too fast.  Crabtree gives you the midterm topics list but has neglected to cover any of the topics listed in class outside of five minute homework assignments, so you unwillingly haul yourself to the library. Betty is too nice to let you sit out there with the plebs, letting you stay in the librarian’s office so you can get to work. It really doesn’t take you long to utterly tire of revision for Crabtree, and the list of topics for your Existentialism class, so you are left sitting at a desk with far too many books spread around you, staring at the winter sun through the window and getting nothing done. You don't think you can justify slinking off for another food or coffee break, there are the carcasses of snack packets littered everywhere among your paperwork and flashcards. You look down at the midterm topics list and your fist curls immediately, your brain goes completely blank, frustrated that you sat in nearly every boring as fuck class but are still no better off for the midterm.

Betty saves you by popping her head round the door twenty minutes later and asking you if you want to go get a coffee and you agree, anything to get your mind off your classes and the feeling of dread they’ve started to give you.

Then, Wednesday happens. You walk to the Robespierre building slower than strictly necessary and with no small amount of bravado. You tell yourself you don't give a fuck, and a lot of times an approximation of that is true, but the red pen on your last paper brings you back like you’re tethered on an elastic string. The boy next to you passes on the exam papers.  Crabtree’s voice cuts through the shuffling of papers.

“You may begin.”

You turn over the paper.

‘Error Theory is the truth about morality.’ Discuss.

It’s alright, you guess. You think you can at least hammer out an answer to that. The pen meets the paper and you begin to write. Over the next hour your pen comes to a halting stop. Your thoughts become an incoherent mess and even things you know you revised become jumbled and you barely write your last conclusion before Crabtree calls the exam closed. The rage from before returns with full force, the whole midterm is an exercise in pointlessness, a test in what you could teach yourself in five minutes and regurgitate like all philosophy is a received collection of facts. You may as well not be here.

Alona stops you on your way out. “I hate to ask but I was wondering if you wanted to come with me to the journalism wine and cheese on Friday? I have to go because I TA a class, but it will be completely more bearable to have someone there who can hold a conversation.”

You look at her like she’s grown a third head, the buzzing in your ears is so loud you didn’t  hear anything she just said, so you say the first thing that comes into your head. “Sure.”

“Great, thank you so much, I’ll come over at 6:30?”

You swallow heavily. “6:30, right.”

Making your way out of the classroom you decide to take the long route back to your dorm. You’re near the end of the corridor when you feel the pinpricks of gathering tears.

Hell no, you think, you will not let that slobbering walrus make you cry, not over one insignificant test. Which you need to do well in to pass the module the little voice in your head says. You promptly tell it to fuck off.

Starting home you enjoy the desertedness of the paths and the biting wind in your face as you power-walk around the quad, past the well kept lawn with its picturesque trees.

You enjoy slamming your bedroom door.

You also enjoy the pints of nasty cider you and Greg down at the Troubadour that night. The best thing about Greg was that your friendship was easy, he never asked questions, besides, it was hard to ask questions with a five piece ‘rock’ band playing less than a metre away. He all but pours you into bed at 4am and refuses to sleep at yours even when you offer him the bed.

“Sleep in your dorm bed when I have a cushy apartment mattress back home? You’re out of your mind Karnstein,” he says, shutting your door in a way that makes your throbbing head ache.

 

***

So understandably, ten minutes before Alona is due to pick you up on Friday, you’re feeling the need for a quiet night after a truly horrible week. A date with your ‘Wonders of the Universe’ DVDs sounds perfect.

What’s even worse is you’re on the phone with your mother.

“And your midterms? How did they go?” you can hear scribbling from the other end of the phone.

“Fine,” you lie.

“Good.” Or what you hear, keep it that way.

You can imagine telling her you thought about dropping out last week.

“Can you remind your brother to apply for those summer internships, the companies we discussed won’t wait around.” ‘Will is not wasting his time like you are and is getting a degree with a transferable skill.

“Surely aged 18 he can- yes, of course,” you reply, defeated.

There’s a knock at your door. “Carmilla?”

“Mother, I have to go,” you say into the phone.

“Alright, phone me soon, yes?”

You don’t respond immediately,  the silence drags for too long but you know you have to answer her. “OK mom, bye.” You click the phone off and only feel guilty for less than a millisecond.

“Carmilla?” Alona asks for the door.

“Coming,” you say grabbing your bag. Maybe you can watch your DVD’s later.

The wine and cheese is held in the foyer of the main building, which is rumoured to have once been the ballroom of the old Silas mansion, the oldest building on campus. It’s as stuffy and as god-damn boring as every university event you’ve been conned into going to. Alona looks beautiful though, and she sails from professor to huddles of students, making small talk with practised ease.

“I just need to do the rounds, then we can get out of here,” she says after have to bite your tongue at the conversation of a group of freshmen. Were first years always that young? “I didn’t make it weird the other night did I? We’re still friends?”

You think back to the impromptu sex you’d had on your bedroom floor. “No, you didn’t make it weird, just once more for old time's sake, yeah?” You lean back against the pillar, wine in hand as you survey the room.

“Yeah,” she laughs, “I am glad we’re friends, Carmilla.”

You roll your eyes exaggeratedly. “Me too, who else would I insult that walrus Crabtree with?”

Alona’s eyebrows shoot into her hairline, all infectious giggles, “he really does look like a walrus!”

“Goo goo g'joob,” you reply. “Is that Laura?” She’s stood in a huddle of nervous freshman in a cream dress that accentuates her tiny waist.

Alona follows your line of sight. “Hollis? Yeah, she’s sweet, you know her?”

“She’s my neighbour.”

Alona looks confused.“I thought your dorm was for upperclassmen?”

“So did I,” you laugh, giving Laura a final glance, “but she’s not so bad.”

The conversations deteriorates into the string of awful room-mates you both had last year before Alona catches sight of the clock. “I better get going, I didn’t realise we’d been here so long! I have to be up early, Adonis fest preparations and all.”

Why is  someone so fierce and outgoing a summer sister? Maybe that was exactly why. You tell her so and she laughs.

“You seem to have a liking for SumSoc girls, you certainly like to collect us… what was it I heard about Elsie?”

You shove light-heartedly at her. “I’m gonna stick around for a bit, see if I can steal one of those wine bottles they have stashed under that table.” Alona leaves and you make your way up to the refreshment table where Laura is talking with one of the professors you’d made awful small-talk with earlier, leant forward in excitement, talking a mile-a-minute. Cute.

It turns out Laura is still just as fun to annoy. Watching her scrunch her nose at you is equal parts funny and adorable, not that you would tell her that. She keeps up with your literary references without missing a beat and you can’t deny the way she volleys your arguments back at you, all righteous anger and passion is hot. So are her legs, which the surprisingly short dress do nothing to hide. You catch yourself staring far too much.

You’ll admit later though that you didn’t expect her to kiss you. You don’t expect her to kiss you like she knows what she’s doing, either. The suggestion that you ~take it back to your dorm is one you don’t expect her to take, as much as you’re enjoying the feel of where her butt turns into back beneath your hand you know when to leave it there, but she agrees.

The look she flashes you as you leave the room makes your stomach twist. She’s clearly nervous, and it makes you feel nervous too. The fact that she's a freshman, she’s just split with her girlfriend and that LaFontaine would sic the Don-ster on you if you hurt Laura crosses your mind, but she brushes away your concern with a kiss on your cheek that burns the whole way back across campus.

The sex is unexpectedly good. It turns out web-journalism isn’t the only thing Laura is passionate about, teasing you within an inch  of your life and telling you ‘not to push it’ when you smirk up at her. She certainly gives it the best she’s got, in the way she leaves hickies on your breasts and kisses you when she moves up the bed, fast but controlled. When she holds your hand, pinning it above your head, you don’t know whether it’s her own small hand warm in yours that drives your crazy or the way she pushes it into the bed, helpless to touch yourself or even move except for the surging of your hips. She presses little kisses to your face after you come, which betrays her inexperience, but also brings out bubbles of laughter at the sweet gesture, though that might just be the euphoria flooding through your body.

“Are you still alright?” you ask when you have her pushed into the bed. She surprises you by parroting your question back and you smile at her, taking in her flushed face and flyaway hair and noting the glow there.

“Yeah,” you whisper, smiling to yourself when she grinds down onto the leg that’s between hers. A weird lull descends for a moment, like your brain becomes quiet, taking stock, and there’s nothing but the girl below you and her heaving breaths.  

It can’t last forever though.

“I can’t believe you’re still wearing these,” you say, ever so slowly teasing Laura by running a solitary finger down her stomach until it quivers, responsive as she is.

You decide to parrot her earlier moves back at her,  taking time to gauge her reactions and smiling when they produce the exact response you predicted. When you press her hand down into the bed as she had yours she wriggles, unable to keep still as you had done, and when you pepper her face and chest with kisses she giggles, before she catches herself and falls silent.

Her hips buck up and you’re surprised at the show of strength, with the faint ab definition you shouldn’t be, though.

“Curious Laura chose to linger,” you say, pressing light kisses to the downy transparent  hair of stomach.

You don’t exactly know why that line of Goblin Market comes into your head. Even after you say the line in question the poem continues in your head, but you banish it quickly both for your own well-being and because poetry shouldn’t be the thing at the forefront of your mind when there is warm skin beneath your lips and another girl’s moans in your ears.

Besides, even pretension has its limits.

There’s no doubting she’s beautiful, you tease her and she tells you she wants more and it’s written in the way she whines and cants her hips so you give her what she wants, fast enough so that your fingers cramp while words that are hardly words come pouring out of her mouth. You do catch some of it though, and you think she mustn't be aware of the garbled curse words that you would never usually hear her say. This makes it easy to tease her about it after but she doesn't bite, only smiles at you when you sink onto the bed again, silently watching her come down.

One round turns into two, the dizzying aftermath of which sees you twisting to examine five long nail marks down your back from where she’d dragged them spine-ways, shoulder down where they sit burning in your skin. You’d rolled her back over after, pressing her back into the bed and smiling to yourself when Laura presses up against you.

Then you’d moved down, reacquainting yourself with the taste of her hips and her skin now glittering with sweat. She comes with the barest amount of coaxing, your lips around her clit sucking softly. You could be smug about it but instead you find yourself whispering  anything and everything that comes into your mind and watching as she takes your words in. Her clinging tighter to you is endlessly endearing, you can feel her skin on yours from chest to feet and even though your desire has settled you think how easy it would be to slide one thigh between hers and start all over again.

Laura clearly does not have the same idea because her eyes are closing fast. You flop beside her on your front and the last thing you remember is your left arm flinging out and finding her far hip, the smooth skin of her upper thigh before you’re asleep.

 

***

Your brain has this awful way of fixating on great sex. The amount of times you’ve woken up with the rapidly disappearing memory of that one night stand you had with a girl in your calc requirement in freshman year, or that time in the storeroom in the library sat on a kickstool with your legs hooked over some nameless girl’s shoulders as she knelt in front of you. Now both of these images have been replaced by Laura, Laura coming around your fingers, Laura’s cheek against your thigh, the sounds she made in your ear...it’s all hellishly distracting.

The distraction comes at just the right time though because Crabtree announces a group project two weeks before finals, like you needed him to confirm he’s the biggest asshole on campus. The project in question requires you to do three separate study sessions until the bunch of goons you were grouped with can agree on how to split the speaking parts and the slides on the powerpoint. You have a pile of assignments from your other philosophy class piling up which you have been completely avoiding as if leaving it undone will instantly make it easier less mind-numbingly boring. The thought of dropping out buzzes back and forth in your head like a fly.

The only work that gets done is your space science project. You read back-copies of Astronomy and Discover instead of revising Existentialism.

When did opening a philosophy book become so futile?

You think about this question so hard that you need to empty your brain to make it go away. Ticket stubs from bad rock shows begin to litter your desk where Dostoevsky and Sartre should be and you find you miss classes to make up for all the late nights you’ve been having. It’s been so busy, maybe busy isn’t the right word...you’ve been keeping yourself so busy that you haven’t had much of an opportunity to talk to Laura.

You see her come out of a class the next day and follow after her for a few steps, saying hi just as your bag swings round from the force of your walking and hits you in the arm with a dull whoof.

She seems less than glad to see you.

You explain about the group project and you don’t know why you’re so hell bent on her believing that you honestly have been busy and why are you so nervous? Collecting yourself, you smile and wait for her to respond.

“Well, I’m late for my next class already, so...” The fuck knows why she looks so irritated.

And then she just leaves you there right in the middle of the corridor with students coming out from classrooms surging around you as her retreating back disappears from view.

 

***

Your maman arrives home at 11am on Christmas Eve after a week of  managing a company takeover. She brings you a bottle of perfume in a box from her travels, wrapped in newspaper from where she’d packed it in her suitcase to stop it shattering. Will gets a new watch.

Maman deliberately watches you turn the box over in your hands, moving aside the tissue paper to lift the bottle out. You think she’s trying to be encouraging, but her focus on you feels heavy, like it always does. The scent of it on your wrist is musky, a smell you find yourself enjoying. You’ve already thanked her but you find yourself thanking her again, keeping the box close to your chest.

“I thought it would suit you,” she replies, going back to her crossword. Will is fiddling with his watch. It’s as close to family time as you’re gonna get.

On Christmas day you lounge around in your sitting room with yours and Will’s haphazardly decorated tree and admire your presents. Maman makes warm spiced cider (herself) and brings it in to you both on trays. It’s all an exercise in the surreal.

You and Will prepared Christmas dinner earlier, which your maman eats without comment, a fact you ignore because you’re still teasing Will about how he was foolish enough to open his present from the Zetas in front of you. She takes this opportunity to quiz Will about his classes and the charity work the Zetas do, garnering a fair share of your mother’s smiles. That is, until she turns to you.

At least she makes it until 8PM before the office rings and she has to disappear again while you and Will watch Christmas specials in front of the television with wrapping paper still strewn everywhere. Will is visibly disappointed, you...not so much.

You arrive back to college to a clutch of good marks on last semester's finals. Even Crabtree’s. Somewhere, logic dictates this should cheer you up, the hell of last semester had yielded results and from the outside anyone would assume you just needed to work hard and party less.

You’re all too aware that is some grade-A bullshit. The thought of this semester being like the last  fills you with dread and your wallet is suffering from all the shows and the drinks you’d had to take your mind off it. Some kind of crunch point is coming, but then again maybe it isn’t, your new classes might not leave you feeling like you’d  prefer to hibernate through the next year.

A rest from the whole academic nightmare situation comes in the form of Will calling you on a Monday night, obviously wanting a favour.

“I’ll make it up to you.” he says desperately.

“You haven't even told me what it is yet,” you sigh into the phone.

“I need you to date a friend of mine,” he says in a long jumble of words. “I mean I need you to go on a date with a friend of mine.”

“And they say romance is dead. Why?”

“Because we were all talking about how we had dates and I felt bad and I kinda already said you’d go.”

Not getting angry at your little brother is hard at the best of times, but in this moment it’s particularly difficult. “Well, you’ll just have to unsay it.”

Will has this patented whine that his younger self used to use to get the last bar of chocolate or to get out of chores.

“Will, stop.” You say.

You hear Will sigh. “If you do this for me I’ll make mom believe you’re staying to study over Easter break so you don’t have to come back to Vienna with us.”

Now this, this is an interesting proposition. “What’s this girl like?”

“Cute, blonde, likes photography and shit, you’ll like her I promise.”

“It might surprise you that your promises mean little to me William.” Snow has begun to fall outside.

“How you wound me,” Will laughs, “will you go?”

“Ughhh, yes, but I’m getting the whole of Easter break to myself!”

Will whoops down the phone. “Yes!”

“Don’t you have something to say to your wonderful sister who just saved your ass?”

“Thank you! I’m gonna go watch a movie now with some bros, are you alright?”

“Fine,” you lie, “and Will? Just because I’m not coming to Vienna with you doesn’t mean you get out of spending time with me.”

“OK,” you can hear his smile, “We’ll organise something before I go home?”

“Mmmm,” you manage, but Will is already in a rush to get off the phone.

The girl is just as Will says she is, but apparently cute and blonde is not enough to make the date last more than an hour. You’d picked a fairly neutral location, the art gallery in the nearest town big enough to have one and you wander through the exhibits exchanging small talk until you’re blue in the face. Pretending to care is so draining. The premise had been that going to an art gallery would give you something to talk about as you looked at the paintings and photographs. Will had told you this was what she was into, after all. You didn’t know one room of sepia photos could set your teeth on edge to this degree. The word ‘try-hard’ comes to mind when you see the artist’s work, but the girl gushes over them like she hasn’t ever seen another college girls’ Instagram feed.

You float through to the sculpture and find you like that much better. Making it past the hour mark you part ways, giving her the familiar ‘this isn’t going’ to work speech before grabbing take-out with the money Will had given you for the free gallery. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

Laura’s door is wide open when you shuffle past. She’s shouting at her desk like it’s sentient so you go back to your room, dump the take-out boxes and go to investigate. “Having trouble there cutie?”

She whips round, long brown hair following her, gaping at you. Then, then she looks you up and down, head to toe and her eyes widen. It’s nice to know you have that effect on someone, especially Laura in her plaid pyjama pants and tank top that leads your eyes to her cleavage and her impressive arms.

The awkwardness of last semester seems to still be there, you hadn’t forgotten about standing alone in that hallway. You run through a list of potential causes, it could be anything, embarrassment about that one night stand maybe, something in her classes. Laura is hardly an open book.

You think about how you can sum up what could hardly even be called a date. “It was atrocious, we ran out of conversation topics after about 20 minutes and then I had to endure her attempts at small talk, and I’m not exactly good with pleasantries.”

Laura surprises you again, “Well, you don't need to tell me that,” she replies without missing a beat.

You laugh at her, the way her eyebrows shoot up when she’s realised what she said. Laura looks at you and the expression on her face is no longer the surprise of a minute ago and now looks a lot like confusion. You decide not to push it.

Telling Laura about the date, and Will, is something you almost fall into. She seems to drag it out of you without saying a word, despite the fact you usually leave people to make up their own theories about why you and Will have different names and look nothing alike.

“Anyway,” you say, changing the subject, “what were you cursing about when I got here?”

Laura sighs.“My printer won’t work.”

“You can use mine if you want?” It’s not like you ever use the thing except for printing out things to stick on your corkboard.

Laura presses her lips together again when you tease her about almost swearing which will only ever encourage you. She always gets the same look in her eyes, like she’s squaring up for a fight, the same passion you remember from the wine and cheese. And you know how that ended.

Once you both troop into your room you pull your desk chair out and gesture to her, “make yourself comfortable.”

She comes over, looks at you, pausing before plopping down in your chair.

Of course Laura asks you about your computer. The Mac had been a present when you went away to college and was ten times more expensive than any computer you had owned before that. Maman had left a one line note affixed to the box because she’d been away at the time and you remember opening it with your heart in your mouth. It was so expensive you didn’t take it out of the box until you got to your first dorm room and even then it had looked weird in your room full of old things, like your grandfather’s carriage clock which you refused to leave his now empty house without when you first got taken to the children's home.

Laura has her own insecurities though and bares them to you in the form of telling you she hasn’t taken any lit classes since the shouting match with the ginger amazon. You spare her just as she spared you talking about your computer and your printer whirrs into life just at just the right moment to alleviate any awkwardness.

“In future you can just...come and ask to use the printer, if you can’t fix yours.”

She gives you a warm smile as she turns to leave, “thanks Carmilla, you kind of saved my skin.”

“Any time, cupcake,” you reply, “one of us actually has to do some work around here.” You think about the philosophy paper you haven’t started yet, it can wait a while longer.

 

***

Betty has it wrong.

You’re in the library at ten at night distracting, no, helping Betty re-shelve books in return for her basically pestering you into writing your Rousseau essay. You’d thrown a pen across the desk, exasperated when you realised your argument contradicted itself. This paper is not worth the effort. The class isn’t worth the effort.

Betty puts a hand on your back and you smile at her before sitting back in your seat and shaking her hand away. “Carmilla, are you alright? I’ve never seen you this pissed off about a paper!”

“I’m fine, I’ve got a lot going on at the moment that’s all.” It sounds believable.

You’ve just finished helping and are heading towards the exit, carrying on some argument with Betty about how all the philosophers you have to study this semester are white and male.

“It’s Silas, Carmilla, they probably wrote their academic inclusivity policy on the receipts for the wine they drink at meetings.”

“It’s the like the whole campus is stuck in a fifties time bubble....Hey Laura,” you interrupt yourself when you see your neighbour heading down the corridor to the study rooms.

Betty turns to stare at Laura’s retreating back and then at you with a face that means trouble. “Hey Laura???” she repeats.

“She’s my neighbour.” you protest.

“That wasn’t a ‘hey Laura’, that was a ‘hey Laura,’ besides, when do you hang out with people that aren’t me or Greg or that girl you had that thing with last year, or your brother.”

“Are you saying I don’t have friends?”

Betty looks at you, well, more smirks at you, if you’re being honest. “I’m saying you have a problem playing well with others.” She continues to look at you expectantly.

“What?” you whisper.

“So Laura’s cute.” Betty says far too loudly.

You whip round to see if Laura heard, but she’s already right at the other end of the corridor. It’s best if you don’t encourage Betty, so you decide not to answer her.

“Is she your horizontal tango partner?”

“What? No, she’s my neighbour.” Betty gives you a look which communicates I don’t believe you and spill.

“By that ‘hey Laura’,” she makes her voice all low like she’s impersonating a Zeta,  which you think is supposed to be you, “you think she’s cute...oh look you’re smiling!”

“I’m not smiling, this is my planning to murder annoying friends face.”

She laughs at you, a reoccurring trend in your friendship, “OK, OK, I won’t ask.”

“Damn right you won’t,” you reply, making a quick exit and fleeing back to the safety of your dorm. She’s wrong anyway.

 

***

You turn in your Rousseau essay on time, but you miss four classes in one week. All philosophy, of course. You read four more chapters of the Rousseau than the next class assignment needed, making notes purely for your own enjoyment but as soon as you looked at the accompanying class notes any drive to read further vanishes. The relevant academic criticism wasn’t hard to understand, but the essay prompt was so narrow and didn’t use any  parts of the chapter  you found interesting. Lately, writing essays was like doing a puzzle. But puzzles only have one solution, slot tab A into tab B, rinse, repeat.

Any further...dwelling, or... moping is interrupted by a knock on your door.

It’s Laura. She’s wearing jeans and a button-up and christ suspenders, which draw your attention to her breasts. You banish the memories of touching them, compartmentalising is a skill you’ve had sufficient practice at.

“Any chance I could use your printer?”

“And here I thought you were going to ask to borrow a cup of sugar,” you tell her, standing aside to let her pass.

You go back to lounging on your bed, picking up the Kierkegaard that is this week’s pleasure-and-definitely-not-for-class reading. Laura just stays in the corner of your room. “You can just go and print it off you know, unless you need supervision?”

Laura goes to your computer and inserts the USB she’s holding, spinning on the chair halfway to face you. “How are you?”

“Pleasantries? I thought it had been previously established I’m not good at those.” You look up from your book.

“Sometimes I like to convince myself you're a normal person,” You roll your eyes. “Normal is overrated. There are worse things you can be than abnormal.”

The printer whirrs behind her.

“Hey, cupcake, do you want my number?”

Laura’s eyes narrow, “why?”

“Do you think I’m gonna give you a key so you can just waltz in here to steal my ink when I’m not here? For all I know you could hawk my antique clock to fund your pernicious cookie habit.”

“Or I could knock?” But she hands her phone over, a chunky flip that is several years out of date.

Laura spots your expression. “My dad thought I’d use an Iphone to send high-resolution selfies to potential stalkers.”

Ah, overprotective parent, figures. You hand her phone back and she taps a message into it, her forehead furrowing in a way you defy anyone not to call adorable. Your phone dings in your pocket:

from: unknown  
If I were you I would worry less about your clock and more about your vintage Alice in Wonderland -Laura

“Over my dead body,” you say, “that book is over a hundred years old.”

Laura lets out a low whistle. “Can I use this?” she’s holding your stapler up.

You tell her she can, and she staples the pages of her paper with more force than you’d expect from someone so tiny, checking the pages are aligned just so.

You’re confused. “This is a history essay?”

“Yeah, I enjoyed history in high school and thought I should get the requirement over with,” Laura replies.

You recognise that expression, you’ve seen it before on many a college student. “But?”

“But the class is painful, like Perry just caught me not using a cover when microwaving my food in the recreation room painful.”

“I know the feeling.” Only if she knew how much. “I can take a look at it if you want, not that I’ll know what you’re talking about.”

“…sure,”

You go over her essay together, you perched on the side of the desk so she has to look up to make any sort of eye contact. From this angle, looking down into her face, you notice the exact shade of her eyes.

When it’s finished there are two packs of decimated cookies (courtesy of Laura) and four cans of grape soda and one finished essay. Laura yawns.

“Not keeping you up am I creampuff?”

“Sorry, kinda tired,” Laura yawns again. “I hope me needing to print didn’t stop you doing whatever it is you do in here.”

“You would know if I was doing something important, the walls aren’t exactly thick. That’s how I know every time you put Lorde on repeat.”

Laura blushes, and you hadn’t meant for that sentence to sound like that but it is what it is. “Not a fan?”

“It’s like a choir of angels compared to what Jesse plays.”

She laughs, “I’m sure he just loves your classic rock.”

“But that would require him having taste.” Taste is clearly not something your other neighbour has.

“Anyway,” Laura says standing up, “I’ll leave you to do...whatever it is you were doing.”      

You go back to lounge on your bed. “I was only reading, I’m not even reading for class.”

“Looks...heavy? What, did you check it out weeks ago for a bit of light reading?”

“No, it’s my own copy…”

Laura stops dead, looking completely stunned, “it’s a Harry Potter quote, have you not seen Harry Potter?”

You shrug, you guess you’ve never given it much thought before.

“I can see this is already a lost cause,” Laura says.

She is still so easy to bait. “I’ve never seen a full episode of  that show you’re so obsessed with either, the British time traveller who fucks everything up show?”

“And yet you’re the one saying Jesse has no taste?!” Laura’s eyes are wide, and every word is highlighted by fast hand movements like she’s just walked in to find you’ve set your room on fire.

“Taste is highly subjective.” you reply, “though I have a feeling you’re going to try and prove me wrong with your time travel show.”

“As I said, lost cause,” she says, smiling wryly. “Goodnight.”

Lost cause, that’s you.

“Night,” you reply. The sound of Lorde filters through your wall.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Feel as always for the beta.

You change Laura’s name in your phone from ‘creampuff’ to 'Laura' the next time she texts you to print off another history essay. The fact you’d still been asleep after another morning of not going to class was something she did not need to know.

The day after that you actually go to all your classes. There’s no medal at the end of the day but you do feel better, if such a thing exists. You celebrate by going to the foreign movie night at the smallest theater in town with Betty, who can both drive and owns a car which explains why you end up in the only late night cafe right on the other side of campus.

Betty excuses herself to go to the bathroom so you look at your phone to find you have three missed messages, one from Will and two from Laura. The first is a complaint about her Bonaparte essay, so you shoot off a text asking if she needs help, which is the most innocuous text you could manage, save for the winky face at the end. She texts back within minutes with a cry for help. A cry for help with three smiley faces at the end, how... Laura.

Betty comes back and she knows something is up immediately.

“As nice as this is,” you tell her, “something’s come up.”

“Nothing bad I hope-” she sees your expression. “Oh? Would this something happen to be a small brunette we saw in the library the other day? Or one of your other,” she does air quotes, “admirers?”

“That would be telling,” you pick up your purse from the table and put it back in your bag.

“She must be good in bed if you’re missing late night coffee with me to go get laid.”

Your phone beeps in your pocket, you’d texted ahead, telling Laura you were going to be back soon.

“You’re going to go help her with an essay?” Betty’s tone is one of disbelief.

“Did you just read that upside down?” You’re not angry, that is some next-level skill.

“Maybe?” She replies guilty, “but seriously, you’re giving up an evening out to go help some girl you think is cute with an essay, while I practically had to hogtie you to the chair to write your Rousseau paper?”

You shrug.

“She really must be good in bed,” Betty repeats.

“It’s not that…” you don’t mean to say it, but you do, and you find yourself not wanting to take it back.

"Right, so you've suddenly learnt the meaning of altruism?"

"I mean I like spending time with her," you try not to add a rhetorical ok to this, because Betty's question is personal. "Not just because we had sex one time."

"Ah, so you did sleep together!" Betty raises her finger like she’s playing detective.

You raise an eyebrow, but Betty as always is not discouraged.

"What's the problem then?" she asks.

"Did I say there was a problem?"

"Carmilla?" Betty starts, "this is just like last year right? You met that girl and then you slept together a couple of times, called it quits and now you're buds, right?"

"Right." You reply, not really knowing how the two relate.

"So with this girl now, you slept together and now you're friends?"

"I guess, but Alona and I never slept together again after we became friends..." you wonder out loud, this is also a lie, but what Betty doesn't know can't hurt her. You're also quite certain it was different, an alcohol fuelled one-off.

Betty finishes her orange juice and picks up her keys. "And you want to sleep with this girl...Laura...again? Right?"

"Wait, you don't have to give me a ride, I can get a-"

"Shush Karnstein, you can repay me by telling me about this girl in the car."

You mumble your agreement as you make your way back to her car. Settled in the front seat, Betty makes a gesture for you to continue. You roll your eyes at her and she smacks you affectionately you on the arm. Business as usual.

"What were you saying? I can't say I was listening."

"Drop the asshole act, we were just getting somewhere." Betty laughs.

You do up your seatbelt. "And if we actually get going, I might make it back to my dorm before midnight."

She uses the front mirror to give you the side-eye.

You may as well relent, “yes ok? I do want to sleep with her again, but it's more than that."

"So you want her to be a friend with benefits?"

You sigh, "maybe? I don’t know? I like her."

"Like as in you wanna keep her round after you have sex or 'can I take you out for dinner and a movie and I'll only talk over the movie twice'?"

"That was one time-" you reply defensively.

Betty is clearly not having it, "You nearly got us thrown out!"

"And I don't know, I like spending time with her, I might want more?"

“Think about it this way, you could ask her out and see where it-"

"Now can we talk about something else?" You give her the look and she has good sense to put the car radio on, offensively cheerful pop blaring from the speakers.

You grumble.

“Shut up Karnstein, my car, my music.”

***

Laura appears about two seconds after you text her you’re home. You've just put a DVD in so you can unwind and not think about philosophy or majors. Laura hovers at the threshold and shuffles her feet, you sigh, “come in.”

“Thank you!!” She says in a rush, scooting by you to sit on your desk chair and open her own laptop up in her lap.

“When does it have to be in by?”

Laura looks guilty, “10AM tomorrow?”

You laugh, “better get printing then, cutie.”

Laura spins around in your chair. “This is okay, isn’t it?”

“Did I not already say so in my text?”

“Yeah,” Laura protests, but you cut her off.

“Then its fine, do you need help with it now or can I watch my DVD?”

“You can watch tv,” Laura chirps, going back to her essay.

“Thank you for granting me permission, your highness.”

Laura scoffs at you and you add another tally to the ‘friends who aren’t afraid of your sarcasm’ list.

Barely a few minutes later Laura lets out a long sigh.

“Do you need help there or are you just making your own sound effects?”

Laura turns back to you. “This essay is awful.”

“Want me to take a look?”

Laura looks suspicious, “you already helped the other day, are you sure you don’t have better things to do on a Wednesday night than to help some freshman with her essay?”

“I wasn’t doing anything important,” you think of Betty’s mock offended face, “and besides, I’m sure my printer gets lonely so…”

Laura’s look of disbelief is hilarious, a half-hearted attempt at sarcasm that only manages to be adorable. “Uh-huh,” she finally says.

Every half an hour or so you read through what Laura has written, making minor adjustments while Laura tells you how awful her professor is. You begin to understand when Laura hands you the mark scheme to read.

“Is it...ok?” Laura asks after the latest proof read.

“You need to learn to bullshit better,” you say with confidence.

“...and how do I do that?”

“Your argument is solid, but you’re not confident enough in it and if your professor is half the asshole you say he is he’s gonna jump on it...” You scan halfway down the page and find the paragraph you’re talking about. “See, here, don’t leave it open to interpretation, if you mean what you say, show it.”

Laura looks over your shoulder at the paper. “I’m guessing these may haves have to go then?”

“Got it in one.” You turn back to your documentary, unwilling to admit the comfortable lulling effect Laura’s constant typing is having on you. The silence gives you time to think of ways you could ask her out, but you can’t just ask when she’s typing and won’t hear you. Being mortified is not on your to-do list.

It’s 3am before the essay is finished. You can’t remember ever working so hard on a freshman essay in your life even though all you’ve done is suggest a few words and side-eye her until she takes out the quote in the conclusion. Laura looks like she could use a break and there’s no denying you could too, so you fetch that lone bottle of champagne and pour two glasses before you can question your motives.

The way she protests her previous drinking experience amuses you, for all she’s trying to convince you the provincial girl schtick is just an act, she says it so earnestly she may as well not have tried in the first place. She scrunches her face up again and you try not to laugh.

Maybe that was mean. Maybe. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch, it’s not like I know enough about you to know whether that particular accusation is true or not”.

You haven’t found out anything new about Laura since ice-breakers and you both remember how that turned out. Sat where you are your knees barely brush, but you’re so close together you have no choice but to look right into her face. The little look she gives you when she tells you about her grandma makes something warm and confusing stir somewhere, because this girl is made of little expressions and everyday phrases and you want to learn all of them.

Then the moment is gone and you cut to the banter. You had thought this was going well , whatever this was but the way she hesitates sitting down with you is enough to make you second guess yourself

She all but runs away after refusing your jacket, but she’s blatantly cold if she’s shivering like that. When she comes back in it’s with a smile that seems fixed and a horrible blanket that looks like it was the product of a machine combusting at the woolen mill.

Playful Laura is a new one, but the way she lays out the blanket over her legs, staring at you all the while and pulling it up to her chin is nothing but a clear challenge.

“I don’t get any blanket after I made fun of it, is that it?” You say, responding to her teasing yes by serving up your best pout that is usually only reserved for Will.

She caves, all sweet smile and diligent care as she spreads the overgrown mothball out over you both. It’s like she knows she’s given in too early, because she turns her attention towards the screen and not to where you are conspicuously looking at her.

“It’s comforting, to think how small we are in comparison...” you start, after Brian Cox is done with his enraptured spiel on star birth. Somewhere, you find yourself wanting to tell Laura about your problems with your major, about how reading philosophy still makes sense to you and somehow always will but also how going to classes seems like a waste of effort.

“You are definitely a philosophy major,” she replies.

It’s a thudding crash back to earth, back to reality. Carmilla Karnstein: overly analytical philosophy major. Your head aches with it all, and with the ache to get away.

You’re so caught up in your thoughts you don’t notice when Laura falls asleep, ok, a complete lie- you notice the exact moment her head grows heavy against your eyes and her eyelashes flutter against her cheek. She breathes the even breaths of sleep far too quickly for you to consider waking her up and throwing her out.

Carefully, you reach across her one-handed to pick up the blanket, pulling it under her chin and tucking it there, then snugly in between her shoulder blade and the wall.

Sleep ruffled, Laura makes quite the image. This is what you didn’t see last time, Laura waking up bleary eyed on that Saturday morning.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to-” she protests, looking guilty which is an expression you remember hazily from that first time with the printer back in September.

She actually has the heart to glare at you when you all but chuck her out so she makes it to the class she’s worked so hard to finish the assignment for. You watch as she goes the whole two steps to her door and unlocks it, knowing- or at least telling yourself you’ll ask her the next time you see her. Or maybe you’ll chicken out again.

“Goodnight Carm,” Laura tells you in the quiet. Your stomach roils and you make promises to yourself you don't know you can keep.

***

Laura is friends with far too many gingers. You see her with LaFontaine when you take a shortcut through the cafeteria on Pizza Friday to get home. You can’t ask her with an audience, you think, anyway, she’s in the middle of some sort of Pizza competition...how can someone so small eat that much pizza?

On Tuesday she’s in the rec room, so you take a step towards her before Perry beats you to it. “Laura, I’m sure that you know the dorm potluck is coming up and I was wondering if I could sign you up to contribute anything?”

You scoff. Good luck, all she eats is snack cakes and pizza.

There’s clearly no chance of asking her today, what’s worse, ginger German major could pressgang you into bringing something. You scarper soon after that.

***

Laura is a distraction. A very pretty distraction you would like to spend more time distracting, but a distraction nonetheless.

With every passing day you fall more and more behind with your schoolwork. You’re almost certain you’ve missed the recap of idealism altogether. You remember with some sadness how you spent a summer in high school when maman was actually home in your room thumbing through Hegel, understanding half of it but being eager to finish. The number of times you've read his work over the intervening years is enough to pull you through pop quizzes but gives you nothing in the way of reward.

Who said academics had to be rewarding says a voice in your head. Mother certainly didn’t, she cared about the little black printed numbers of your GPA and Will owning her business one day.

You’re wrong, you think, Maman’s reward was in the money she earned and in the shares of her business and in pushing a suited Will forward at events. And you too, sometimes, when you said something particularly analytical or observant. You are more of a one trick monkey than Will though.

That afternoon’s lecture, which you force yourself to attend, is physically painful. You’ve done the reading the material but needn’t have bothered, the way the professor explains it has no bearing on anything you took out of it and it sounds formulaic in his dull droning voice. It does not bode well for the extra-curricular lecture you’re going to later to help make up your mind about dropping out.

So seeing a sheaf of long brown hair when you head into the communication block is just a bonus. As good as you think she looks with half of her hair off her face, a part of it drawn back in two intricate braids, while the rest of her hair cascades down her back, it’s when you see her tongue peeking out and find yourself laughing internally you know you have to go and ask her.

That doesn’t stop you from staring at her ass as you approach. “Are you cheating on my HP with that fancy double-sided model?”

Laura jumps out of her skin, whirling round to face you. “I won’t tell if you don’t.” She looks...preoccupied.

You can see her bra through her shirt and reprimand yourself until you look away. Why does this girl have this effect on you? Seeing colour flare on her cheeks, seeing her flustered and knowing it’s you that caused it makes you want to kiss her against the printer table she’s leaning on until she’s breathless and blushing even harder. A step closer is a start.

But you have something important to ask her, you can kiss her afterwards. Hopefully.

“What are you doing here?” You don’t expect her to change the subject, but you don’t exactly expect Laura’s voice to sound so accusatory, either.

“Just catching a talk on ‘the Legacy of Existentialism in Modern Media’, why, wanna join me?” that isn’t asking her on a date Karnstein, well done. An extra-curricular philosophy lecture can’t rank up the list of most girls’ idea first dates.

“Nope, just here, printing my essay… which you see me do a lot so I’m just gonna…”

You take a deep breath in, just ask her looping in your head, but she’s very distracting, pinkened cheeks and soft soft lips. Laura jerks, and the moment is lost. The main building bell tower strikes the hour, better get going Cinderella, the voice in your mind supplies, you lost your chance already. You don’t know what exactly makes you turn back and reach up to touch her braids. Your fingertips hardly brush smooth hair before you pull your hand away. Get a hold of yourself, you’re already late... Since when did you care about being on time?

“You can’t just do that.” Laura spits. Wait, what?!

You’re confused. “Do what?”

“You can’t just get in my space and expect I’ll… fawn over you! I may be an easy target, but don’t expect me to roll over for you every time you give me attention!”

The level of venom in Laura’s voice has you stumble back a step. “...What?”

“That’s what you’ve been doing, right? With your late night study sessions and your stupid space documentaries.”

Processing those words takes a minute and replaying them in your head doesn’t make them any clearer. “That’s what you think’s been going on? Creampuff, I…”

Laura looks at you with an expression that makes your gut twist, and not in the way you usually associate with her. “No, Carmilla, you don’t get to call me that when you’re only interested in getting in my pants again.”

The fact that Laura is insinuating that you would what...demand payment for help with her essay sets your jaw on edge and has your fists mirroring Laura’s curled ones. It’s the furthest thing from what you wanted but Laura said it with such conviction you know she believes it deep down. Judgements like that were always hard to break. But that’s all it was, a judgement.

“You know what, I’m late to my lecture, and when you’re done judging me, for frankly I’m not sure what, you can come find me.” The lecture hasn’t even started when you get up to the room, and you all but throw yourself into the seat that Alona has saved for you.

“What’s up with you?”

You don’t turn to look at her. “Nothing.”

***

Laura turning out to be an asshole was not what you needed right now. Feeling hurt and replaying her overheard comments, ‘when do you ever see Carmilla with anyone she’s not sleeping with- it’s not like she has any friends’doesn’t even rank on your ever lengthening list of priorities.

Tell that to your brain, though.

Your brain is mainly hung up on two things, firstly, that Laura thought you helping her was just some ploy to get in her pants when if you’d just wanted in them- you would have asked. Secondly, that Laura thinks you only socialise with your fuck buddies after seeing you with Alona (she’s got you there Karnstein, your mind supplies) despite the fact you and Betty have never slept together and you certainly would never sleep with Greg….

Why do you spend so much time justifying yourself?

You have friends, one of your friends you’ve slept with sure, but does this make that friendship less valuable? If people spent half the time they do policing each other’s friendships and relationships instead of finding out what they themselves were comfortable with…

It’s easy to be out of the dorm over the next few days. Betty has an apartment off campus and she doesn't even question you when you ask if you can stay during the day, trekking back to your dorm when you need the use of your bed. Although she can pull gossip out of just about anyone, she knows when not to pry and when to force you to laugh at the fashion catalogues that come through the door. The 80’s is back apparently, and Betty finds neon legwarmers hilarious, thus why she now has at least six pairs.

You’re sitting at Betty’s breakfast bar after she’s left for lectures when your phone rings.

“Ah, so you are alive?” you hear Will’s voice from the other end of the phone.

“It’s cute that you feel the need to check,” you reply, wondering how quickly you can get him to hang up so you can go back to doing nothing.

“So I guess there’s no point in asking how you’re doing?”

You laugh, “None. How is the frat house that brains forgot?”

It’s Will’s turn to laugh, but he goes silent for a few seconds and that has you worried. “I didn’t realise how hard it would be to do all the activities and do class work?”

“Do you have to do everything those dunderheads do?”

“Pretty much, but don’t worry about me, I’ll find a way.” Will may be eighteen, but his often hidden and begrudging optimism always makes him sound about 80.

“Who said I’m worrying?” you reply and wait for him to laugh at you again.

“Seriously though, Milla, are you ok?”

“I won’t be if you keep using that awful nickname.”

Will falls into the trap immediately, “you can hardly blame me for it, I was little,”

“Eight isn’t that little...Sometimes I think you’re still eight…” you reply.

“Always so funny kitty, I noticed you haven’t answered my question.”

You think about telling him, but that’s not how you and your brother’s relationship works. He has always been your little brother, and he has always come to you with your problems. It’s...strange to tell him yours.

“Carmilla?” Will’s voice halts your train of thought. “What’s wrong, is it serious?”

“I’m thinking about dropping out.” Saying it sounds final. Certain. You’re not certain about this at all.

“Ok? It’s not too late to take business management?”

You have to laugh at that, your mother would sell her Louboutins for that. Will’s annoying mouth breathing is the only thing you can hear.

“W-why do you want to drop out?” Will is about as good as being the supportive one as you are telling him your problems. Neither of you know what the hell you’re doing. “Is there any way you could stick it out to the end of the year?”

“I hate it here.”

“It’s not that bad,” Will jokes, or at least he tries to.

“I can’t stay, I won’t,” the whatever maman says is left unsaid.

Will sighs. “Maybe she won’t react in the way you think?”

“Because that’s likely.”

More silence. You and Will are awful at this. “What will you do if you leave? Will you be an unemployed bohemian in some smoky bar?”

“Can you imagine Maman’s reaction? She’d probably come drag me out by my collar herself,” the image is somewhat amusing to you.

“Look, if you’re really not enjoying it she wouldn’t…”

“You are such a momma’s boy,” you joke, laughing at Will’s sound of frustration. It’s your turn to sigh, maybe Will wasn’t the best person to tell. “I need more time to think.”

“That’ll be new for you kitty,” Will replies and the twilight zone of sibling heart to hearts is well and truly over. “Everything else alright?” Ok then, maybe not.

“Yeah, I’m just preoccupied at the moment,” all of that hanging out with girls to use them for sex must have tired you out, you think and then regret it because it causes a pang from somewhere in your stomach.

Will hmm’s down the phone. The conversation of teasing and somewhat forced pleasantries barely lasts another minute before you’re all but throwing the handset on Betty’s sofa. You don’t have any more spare clothes and Betty’s apartment is somewhat lacking in reading material that isn’t old copies of Cosmo so you troop back to your dorm undecided on whether you’re only going to pick up clothes and a book or maybe stay a while.

Your dorm is so still and silent when you get back. Usually this would be the perfect state of events, no thumping club music from Jesse and no bubblegum pop from Laura meaning you could read a book in peace. But now it just feels eerie, drawing your mind back to the huge elephant living beyond your paper thin walls. You mash the button on your iPod dock and stick with the first song that plays allowing it to take away your ability to think.

Stretched out on your bed and barely dozing you have to open one eye to confirm the fact your printer is whirring. The first thing you feel is a surge of anger, because not only can she not use a printer Laura is now taunting you with her uncanny ability to always be around, even when you have no desire to talk to her. You wish you had the ability to set things on fire with your mind, because then you could leave Laura’s burning printer test page right outside her window on the quad and then maybe she’d learn to waste her own fucking ink, and not waste your fucking time.

But it’s not a printer test page. You see the first line, Dear Carmilla, and shift back to your bed fully intending to ignore it. A sorry note? You think, thinking of ways to describe it. Trite, comes to mind, as does meaningless- surely she must know the chances of you believing any apology from her are slim? There’s not much she can say that you haven’t heard before, you’re tired of sycophantic apologies from people just because you’ve succeeded in making them feel guilty for judging you.

You can’t take your mind off Laura.

Leaving your dorm room is an option, Betty is at a party tonight but wouldn’t mind you setting up camp on her couch. But removing the temptation won’t stop you thinking about her, you won’t let her note and the information leaflet about dropping out burn guilty holes in your desk.

You snatch the note up and resist the urge to rip it cleanly in two.

Dear Carmilla,  
I want to apologise for what you heard yesterday, and for what I said the other day in the Douglass building. It was judgemental and uncalled for, especially after you had already given me a second chance when I judged you when we first met. My assertion that you have no friends was completely unfounded, and I never bothered getting to know you enough to know, which I deeply regret.

Furthermore, I gave you no reason to trust me when all you were was nice to me, especially after helping me with my paper and letting me use your ink. You were kind to me and I threw it back in your face because I was willing to judge you on something that isn’t my business, partially because I was jealous but mainly because I had no idea how to act around you which is no excuse.

I thought I believed that people have the right to make their own choices free of judgement, but my actions have shown me that I don’t practice what I preach. I’m sorry for betraying your trust and friendship and I am sorry for any hurt I may have caused you by my actions. I would like the chance to make amends, which you don't have to take but I would like to show you that I am trying to be better and will keep trying to be better and that your friendship was not misplaced.

If you’ve read this far, thank you, and I really am sorry,

Laura Hollis.

You reread the note until you no longer desire to crush it, severely naive Laura may be but you don’t think she’s a liar. Not intentionally. But Laura’s right, she judged you before and then did it again, and one screw-up is harder to forgive than two.

It’s not like forgiveness is your strong point, otherwise you would wouldn’t have run to this hellhole of a university, you would be safely in Berlin with...No, you’re not going to let yourself feel bad about a situation that happened three years ago and you’re not going to feel bad about Laura, she’s said her part and now the choice is entirely yours. If you were spiteful and infantile you would drag it out as long as possible while Laura stewed in her guilt, dragging that corset out of your wardrobe to watch her salivate.

But, you figure, Laura is probably doing more damage herself than you could do, most of the time you didn’t care about people’s assessments of your choices but Laura wasn’t people, you’d chosen to spend time with her and just as she had said in her note, she’d thrown in back in your face.

So, naturally, you go to the campus coffeehouse, order a black coffee, sit by the window and people watch, all so you can think. You don’t make up your mind by the time they throw you out at closing, but you make up your mind somewhere between the coffee shop door and your dorm with the sounds of your footsteps in your ear.

***

“Let me get this straight...you want to come out with us,” you’re still not sure you’re hearing right.

“With you and your friends, only if that’s alright with you, yes,” Laura protests from your dorm corridor.

“You want to come out with Betty and me? Like on a Friday night?”

“That’s right, as friends, to make it up to you, y’know? Get to know the people you willingly spend time with...” It’s said in jest but the words still have to hurt you, especially coming from Laura’s mouth. “I’m sorry,” she says immediately, “I just meant-”

You interrupt before she can dig herself any more well-meaning holes. “I know what you meant, it’s alright.”

“You guys like going to shows at the Troubadour right?”

“Yeah...but I’m not sure it’s your thing, cutie,” you try to imagine tiny Laura in the often rowdy crowds at the Troubadour with its black walls and sticky floors.

Laura’s nose scrunches. “It can be my thing.”

You give her a look.

Laura runs one had through that long hair. “I thought it would be nice?”

“I’ll check who’s playing on Friday.” You turn away from her to open your door, your heart beginning to race. 

“So…Friday then?” Laura asks, hand hovering over her own door handle.

You smile, even though your sudden nerves are making your stomach roil. “Friday.”

It turns out that Friday’s band are a local group you remember seeing last year. You meet Betty and her friend Natalie half an hour before you’d told Laura to arrive...you are begrudgingly fond of Betty, but she has no subtlety and you need to pre-brief her before she decides to tell Laura all your secrets.

“Where are the tickets?” you ask when you finally see them loitering by the door.

“Haven’t got any, we’re on the guest list,” Natalie says, “I told you the band are local, right? Well, as local as you can get here in the middle of nowhere.”

“Wait,” you say, panicking, “you did get four, right?”

“Wait,” says Betty, “you’re bringing a plus one? Why did you not tell me about this earlier? Who is she?”

It’s then Laura shows up.

“You’re early,” you say redundantly.

“Cute library girl!” Exclaims Betty.

“Yeah, I didn’t want to be late,” Laura says and gives Betty a little wave. She comes right over to you and whispers in your ear, “cute library girl?”

Betty sees and starts laughing while you grumble a reply under your breath.

“Betty, this is Laura,” Laura says hi to each of them and you watch Betty’s smile widen as she and Laura exchange pleasantries.

“Carmilla’s been helping you with your essays right?” Betty asks Laura in a way that seems innocent but you know coming from Betty is anything but.

“Yeah, I have this history requirement that is unnecessarily difficult and Carm helped me with this pointless paper I had to write.” Laura is so earnest and you know she’s endeared herself to Betty already but Betty still finds the time to mouth ‘Carm’ over the top of Laura’s head.

“Your grades must be really good for you to put so much work into a freshman essay,” continues Betty in a way Laura must catch onto. She’s had her fun, you decide, making a guillotine gesture over your neck.

“I didn’t tell Betty that we argued,” you tell Laura later when you’re in line to enter the venue.

“Thanks,” Laura replies, looking down at the floor for a moment, “you didn’t have to do that.”

“Betty is...pretty laid back but she can be a terrier when it comes to protecting her friends, not that I need protecting of course.”

Laura swallows noticeably, “I will bear that information in mind.”

You smirk, resisting the urge to put your arm around her shoulders while you wait. So, your brain does the next best...worst thing. "You look amazing tonight."

 _God Karnstein why did you say that, you sound like every bad rom-com. It's true though_ , chimes in another voice in your head. It is true, Laura is beautiful in a burgundy skate style dress with a cut-out back, a colour you wouldn't have thought she wore a lot, but it suits her and shows of the long legs you had admired what seemed like years ago at the wine and cheese.

"You too," Laura replies, bumping your shoulders together. You stand there waiting for the security guard to check the tickets, side by side, your skin touching. You think about taking her hand, you want to, but Laura had said  _as friends_ and you have to respect that however much you want to...

The guard rips the stub off your ticket and interrupts your train of thought. Which is probably a good thing.

Once inside, you find the usual crowd of students and the occasional young professional from the town a while away and you take Laura’s hand as you head to the bar.

“What can I get you creampuff? Something pink and sugary?”

“Did you just say pink and sugary?” Betty leans over them and onto the bar, “I hope they’re on you Kitty.”

“Kitty?” Laura asks.

You think the following wave of your hand qualifies as an explanation, but Laura’s confused expression you know she doesn't take it as one. “It’s my brother’s nickname for me, Betty must have overheard him when I made the mistake of inviting her to my birthday party.”

“Invite me? Your brother threw you the most lacklustre last minute shindig and you acted like you'd just been canonised as a saint just by going ten minutes without complaining about it!”

You roll your eyes, having Will pop a confetti cannon in your face was not exactly your idea of a good time.

“She's so pleasant to be around, isn’t she,” Betty says to Laura conspiratorially. Laura looks from you to Betty with confusion, before smiling at Betty in what you recognise is a fixed way. Betty orders her and Laura coolers and you a glass of appalling Troubadour wine while the both of them talk about some campus event and giggle like they haven't just met each other.

“Let’s go get a space by the barrier,” says Betty, drink in one hand and Laura’s elbow in the other.

“I don’t-” Laura starts.

“Come on! It’s 9AM on a Friday, where’s your sense of adventure?”

Laura grumps, but it’s not like Betty not to get her own way. “Ok fine,” she replies, looking at Betty with something akin to fondness. You could count the feeling in your stomach as jealousy, but you're not going to.

You follow them with no small sense of amusement, cutting through the crowd easily in the wake of Betty who all but shoves people out of the way. Going to the front of concerts isn’t usually your thing, people jumping up and down might spill your drink and standing to the side or finding a convenient wall to lounge on means you can watch the band without some idiot jumping on your foot.

Like hell you're gonna let Betty tell Laura every embarrassing secret about you while you watch on, though.

“Glad you decided to join us,” Betty says as you join Laura on her other side. You give her a look behind Laura’s back.

The band come on twenty minutes after that, Laura woops along with the crowd, clapping along as the peppy lead singer introduces themselves and the drummer counts them in.

The first song ends, and it’s just the sort of music you’ve heard coming through the wall from Laura’s room, female fronted and poppy. Laura whoops again, punching you in the arm when she realises you’re not clapping.

“You enjoying yourself, creampuff?”

“They’re so good!” Laura’s smile is so big you’re surprised her face isn’t cracking.

You have to admit maybe the band aren’t so bad after all, the bassist actually knows her way around her instrument and the lyrics aren’t the usual string of senseless na-na-na’s you’ve come to expect in the music most of your peers seem to like. The man comes round to pour water into the mouths of thirsty concert goers and Laura leans up, a stray drip moving down her chin that should not have you staring like that.

“Do you want a drink?” you shout over the music.

Laura tries shouting back, but her voice lost over the thrumming of the bass. She takes her phone from a pocket, thumbing the worn keys and showing you the screen:

Yes, why?

You take the phone, taking a second to remember how phones used to work without querty keyboards and writing your own (much slower) message beneath:

I’m gonna go get drinks, do you want water?

Laura nods, smile showing her perfect cheekbones. She takes her phone back putting her hand on your upper arm:

Thanks Carm :) :)

Betty rolls her eyes from over Laura’s head.

You get an ice cold water and a vodka and coke for yourself, making your way back to Laura along the side of the room. On stage, the singer announces a new song. You only need to take two more steps before you see Betty and Laura, swaying to the beat of the song, Laura with her hands above her head like no-one’s watching. The rhythm of Laura’s hips is mesmerising and you would do anything to put your hands on them and feel them move beneath your palms. You stare a little too long and only some dimwit barging into you breaks the spell.

You hold up the water, which Laura takes with both hands, leaning in, a ghost of a hug and yelling ‘thanks’ over the din.

“This is our new single, it’ll be out next Tuesday so make sure you pick up a copy,” announces the sweaty lead-singer who you haven’t even been paying attention to.

The song is unlike the band’s others. The beat is immediately slow, and you enjoy the way the guitars layer over one another. You’re all too aware of your heart thumping in your chest, moving to the music before you’re even aware. Any thoughts of your major are a thousand miles away, secondary to the thrumming of the bass and the sight of Laura beside you. You move closer to her and she smiles at you, already mouthing the words to what is admittedly a repetitive chorus and swaying from side to side.

She reaches for your hand and pauses for a moment but when you don’t move, just looking at her. She recovers, placing your hand on her shoulder. Laura is so close you can feel the hard bump of a hipbone then warm skin through her T-shirt when your stomachs brush. 

You don’t expect her to move closer to you and put one warm palm on your hip, guiding you so you move together. This expectation is somewhat false, you reason, as you’ve seen this side of Laura before in a more horizontal set of circumstances and the heat it flared in you was present in both situations.

Laura’s eyes are full of mischief.

You keep swaying closer, senses on fire- the heat of her skin where it meets your hand, the sound of the music inescapable, the aftertaste of the vodka in your mouth and Laura’s brown eyes mere inches from yours so that her breath grazes your cheek.

There’s more than a split second when you think of kissing her, seeing what she tastes like on your tongue, what her hair feels like when you run your hand through it. Maybe then your brain would have something else to replay when the world around you is quiet.But you don’t. She probably has some preconceived notion about kissing someone you’ve gone out with as friends.

You stand there, palm sweaty from more than the heat of the crowd, Laura's hand warm on you hip keeping you steady. It would be all to easy to lean in and kiss her, the need is there, it hasn't exactly gone away through all those failed attempts at asking her out. The pull to just do it, to kiss her consequences be damned is hard to ignore, but you do, even with Laura's breath still on your cheek.

You pull back the millisecond the song finishes. The words 'as friends' repeat in your head like a mantra, because you always stare at your friends lips like you're currently staring at Laura's. Laura doesn't move until the lead singer starts talking again, her hands dropping to her sides. 

"That was our last song guys, you’ve been a great audience!” The lights come on again and you’re left there both looking sweaty as the crowd pushes at you towards the exit. You're still trying to process the fact Laura was staring back.

Betty meets up with you somewhere near the bar, Natalie having got lucky and she smirks at you like that isn't your role in your friendship. “I hate to sound like an animated crab but you didn't kiss the girl.”

“What?” you say, hoping she’ll drop it if you play dumb.

“Nuh-uh Karnstein, I saw you getting all in each other’s space over there.”

“You’re delusional Spielsdorf,” you respond with an eye roll for added effect. “I need to get some air.” You can let Betty pull it out of you later, reason it through with her before your head explodes.

The cool night air feels inviting, your internal body heat enough to keep you from feeling cold, an integral part of the post-show high along with the ringing in your ears that will last well into the night.

You say goodbye to Betty and purposefully ignore the look she gives you. Neither you nor Laura say much, not until you’re outside Laura’s door.

“I had a nice time tonight,” she says. There’s a tug of nervousness in her smile. You're glad you're not the only one. 

“Me too...we should do this again soon.” This is the giving her a chance part of giving her a chance, whatever part of you that was mad at her is being quashed by the part that wanted to kiss her and feels cheated.

You turn away  to get your door open, you can feel her staring at you and it's very hard not to sneak furtive glances back at her. 

“Cool...Well I’m going to, you know, go, because this is our dorm and this is my door so…” she gives you this little approximation of a wave before disappearing inside her room. You could have sworn she leaned closer to your cheek before going inside, but you shuffle into your own room,  kicking the trash can in frustration at your lack of nerve. _Next time_ , you say to no-one.

***

The next day a scientist somewhere in Europe finds the largest star to be discovered in a decade, but your teacher decides against jettisoning the lesson plan so you and a small group of others stay behind to crowd around the projector screen while your professor pulls up articles. You’re lucky there’s no class waiting to come in because you stand there for twenty minutes with relative strangers and where their excitement is written on their faces yours is more internal but no less heartfelt. The high resolution images look even better on the classroom’s projector and silence descends over the five of you as you gaze at it.

The professor hastily stares at his watch, “I’m already late.” He all but runs to the door, holding it open. “Well? I’ll get in trouble for leaving you unattended in here.”

“Professor?” says the boy standing next to you, “your computer is still on.”

“Could you turn it off for me, don’t bother with the projector, there isn’t a soul in the building who knows how to get those things to turn off.”

You all file past him on the way out of the door and you’re the last.

“Karnstein? Have you thought about applying for the department’s summer internships?”

“I’m not a space science major.”

The man looks at you over his glasses. “Oh. Shame.”

***

You meet Laura for the fourth time that particular week in that coffee shop, her books spread out of the table while you still ignore all your reading.

“Carmilla?” You look up from your cup to Laura. “Are you...bored? I could put my books away if you don’t want to study? Or you could bring your...Rousseau?”

“Have you ever seen me study?”

Laura chuckles, “I saw you in the library once?”

“Someone has to protect Betty from frat boys,” you say, imagining Betty’s reaction if she could hear you.

“I don’t think Betty needs the protection,” Laura counters immediately.

“I don’t think it’s the frat boys that need protection from Betty either,” you try keeping a straight face, but Laura laughs and you find yourself laughing too.

“Still,” Laura says slowly, “we can do something else if you want?”

“Cupcake,” Laura’s eyes narrow, “Laura, it’s fine, you study, I’m enjoying people watching.”

Laura’s look tells you she’s not convinced. “What’s wrong?”

“Who said anything is wrong?”

Laura freezes at your tone. Her hand lies near yours on the table but she makes no move to take it. She does that, sometimes when you go get her coffee or sometimes absent-mindedly while she's working. “You’ve seemed...preoccupied lately? Not that you have to tell me, I mean I know…"

“Laura, you’re fine,” you repeat, “you’re right, I am...preoccupied.”

Laura waits for you to continue, placing her hand over yours. It’s hard to tell Laura the whole mess with your major when you’re still dancing around each other. Anyone would be better help than Will, though. You arch your hand slightly under hers to let her know you appreciate whatever this is, only ever one step away from wanting to intertwine your fingers like you see the other obnoxiously gross couples do around you everyday. Maybe if you keep thinking about Laura all this mess with your major will go away, _nice try_ , your mind supplies.

“I’ve been having some problems with my major,” you confess slowly, “I love philosophy but…”

“...But you hate your classes?” Laura finishes.

“Right,” you reply.

“Have you tried talking to your professors about it?”

You scoff, and tell her all about the Crabtree debacle and how you’ve been thinking about dropping out.

“What’s stopping you?” Laura asks

“What?! Anyone would think you’re trying to get rid of me!”

“No! I just mean if something else will make you happy why don’t you go and do that?” Laura’s earnest expression signals that she means it, but you can’t believe your ears.

“It’s not as easy as that, creampuff.”

“Why not?”

You laugh but even the sound of it is harsh. “I can’t see my mother reacting to that well. She has ...certain expectations?”

“Ah,” nods Laura, “I understand, only daughter of a small town policeman? And at least I’m not brooding into my latte about it.”

“It’s a black coffee,” you reply, but Laura laughs at you and the battle is clearly lost.

“What do you want to do about it? Your major I mean?”

Want? What do you want? “I don’t know,” you say, “a professor asked me if I was applying for space science internships.”

“And space science is your...minor?” Laura hedges, you’d probably told her that night with the space documentaries.

“Yeah, it’s my minor. So I thought if I changed it to my major?” You don’t sound particularly sure.

“That’s great! You have all those things put up on your board, and that telescope in your room, I think you should totally do it!” Laura takes a sip of her syrup loaded macchiato and manages to get foam all around her mouth.  
Laura’s world clearly has fewer shades of grey than yours. “You obviously see things...very clearly…”

“Maybe you just overthink things?” Returns Laura taking another long sip. She puts her now empty mug down. “The only thing you can do is try, Carmilla.” Her hand squeezes yours tightly.

You let the words sink in for a moment, your mind going a mile a minute.

Laura takes your hand. “You deserve to be happy, I mean who gets in this sort of debt to be miserable?”

***

Changing your major is a lot less dramatic than dropping out. Easier too. The paperwork, when you check, is relatively straightforward and you’ve already done some of the requirements.

Weeks ago, you'd considered whether or not academics should be rewarding.

Wouldn’t it make a difference to you? Didn’t you deserve that kind of reward?

Who are you kidding? Mother saw no value in that kind of study, research was not profitable, discoveries not monetarily quantifiable. You were almost certain that maman thought at least with a philosophy degree it would be easier to convince you to take a position with Hastur Corp. out of desperation when you couldn’t find a job.

All the more reason, the voice says again.

Your mind conjures an image of you changing your major at the administration office, signing the paperwork, telling Will. You think of your pile of philosophy work and feel guilty. There was a time you loved philosophy and took unusual delight in savagely outmanoeuvring your classmates in seminar debates.

This is some grade A bullshit, Carmilla. You still love philosophy, you read Rousseau and Kierkegaard for fun recently, didn't you? The only difference was you read it for you. There was no graded paper for your thoughts, no final for your theories. And that’s okay.

You feel relief, in the making up of your mind.

***

You’ve been doing ~whatever this is with Laura for nearly 2 weeks, and you’d like to think the world is returning to whatever dull sort of normal you’d come to expect from Silas. It just so happens normal for you doesn’t include you and Laura still being weird and it didn't include her watching exactly what says unless she hurts you again. That got no-one in life anywhere. To be honest you're proud you even hold out for as long as you do, especially when the see this girl every day.

“Isn’t it time we talk about this?” You say one day when you’re the only people in the small coffee shop.

“About this what?” Says Laura absentmindedly, flipping a textbook page over with her pen in her mouth.

“About us, about what this is. Unless you want to keep seeing how things go,” because that didn't sound defensive, good one Karnstein.

Laura’s pen falls out of her mouth, “is that...what you want to do?”

“I was thinking more...seeing how things went on a permanent basis,” you drawl, hoping Laura will get your meaning. There's only so much thinking about kissing her at inopportune moments a person can take after all.

“I think some people call that...dating,”

You smirk at her, knowing she'll take the bait if you offer it. “If you want to call it that cutie,”

“Carmilla!” Laura laughs, “be serious for one second!”

You settle for an overblown roll of the eyes that gets Laura laughing.

“So…” Laura starts, “opinion on the dating? Because if you don’t want to do the monogamy thing that’s fair, I mean we both have to be happy and-”

You cut her off mid-sentence, as much as your heart aches right now, with possibility, with hope, with whatever it is, you two have to understand each other. “For non-monogamy to work, Laura, both sides have to be happy, you don’t have to agree to non-monogamy as some sort of...term and condition for dating me. We have to agree, otherwise we’ll both be miserable."

“and being miserable would be bad,” Laura replies.

“and being miserable would be bad,” you agree, “but you have to tell me what you want.”

“Is it ok to not know what I want? I mean I haven’t been in many relationships before and…” Laura sounds so young then, looking at you across from you in the cafe with froth still on her upper lip.

“It’s ok to not know what you want, we can work it out together, but when you realise you have to tell me, even if you think I won’t want to hear it.” Everything is staked on Laura’s next words, you’ve given her this weird power to wound you that you know you wouldn't take back.

“I promise, when I work it out I’ll tell you.” Her hand finds yours, then the other and even if you weren’t the only two customers in the place you know it would still feel like you were. “Dating?”

It’s weird how big decisions are made in the same way you agree to print her essay off or to get her another coffee, “dating.”

***

“Let’s not go this way,” says Laura when you walk home together after your Space Geology lecture. She awkwardly moves between you and the wall, but your shoulders bump and it almost sends Laura flying. Recovering, she quickens her pace along the corridor where you lag behind, craning your neck to see what Laura was keeping you from. Her hand slides into yours and you forget what you’re supposed to be looking at. Strange, how that happens when Laura does that.

Laura stops you outside your room, taking your other hand as well. “You know I said I’d make it up to you?”

You think for a moment about joking about all the ways Laura can make it up to you, but her face is earnest and contrite. Something in the back of your head says ‘good’ in a distinctly hostile voice. “Yeah,” you reply slowly.

“There’s this thing on Friday and I was kinda hoping you’d come with?”

You don’t meet her gaze. “I planned to see a show at the Troubadour.”

Laura’s face falls.

“But I suppose I could make a change of plans for you creampuff.” Your heart does a strange flip when Laura’s smile spreads right the way across her face.

“Meet me here? At six thirty?” Laura’s timid expression makes you laugh, it looks so foreign on her.

“Am I allowed to know what this thing is?”

And there, the Laura you’ve come to know is back, little half smile and a blink of her long eyelashes. “I think it’s better if it’s a surprise.”

“Oh really?” you say, “Do I get hints?” Who knew the idea of a first date would turn you into such a child. 

“Absolutely not, I better go pick up my books for my next class before I’m late.” Laura drops your hands and moves past you to her door. 

“Only because you know you’d cave and give me hints, resistance is futile.” 

“See you later Carm!” Laura calls back to you with a chuckle, leaving you alone in the corridor.

***

Laura knocks when you’re just brushing a particularly tough knot out of your hair. You give yourself a last glance in the mirror and pick up your leather jacket from the back of the desk chair.

“Carmilla?” Comes a nervous voice from behind the door.

You smile to yourself. “Here, cupcake, just come in.” The familiarity is weird, but sort of right, the same kind of right when Laura comes in and walks straight over to you and wraps her arms around you from behind. You relax back into her, her eyes and most of her nose are visible over your shoulder. It makes a hilarious picture.

“You ready to go?” Laura says, starting for the door.

“I would be readier if you would just tell me where you’re taking me?”

By the door, Laura leans in for a single, solitary kiss. “That wouldn’t be any fun would it?” Her expression is equal parts all mischief and promise. It looks good on her.

Side by side you walk across campus and even though Laura is wrapped up warm in an adorable peacoat and yellow knitted beret you can’t resist slinging an arm around her small shoulders and pulling her close. Getting to touch her like this, having her smile at you in reply releases some knot of tension in your chest you didn't even know you were holding. You intend to milk your new-found couple status for all it's worth, now that you don't have to force yourself not to touch her.

You arrive at one of the larger science buildings, neither of you have lectures there normally but Laura leads you in, knowing exactly where you are going. You catch a glimpse of a flyer on a stairwell and can’t contain your smile.

Laura follows your line of sight, “is it ok? I saw the print-out on your corkboard and I thought..”  
“Come on, we’re gonna be late,” you tell her, smiling all the way.

The lecture theatre is almost three-quarters of the way full when you get there.

“Welcome everyone,” says a voice from the podium, “and welcome to my talk on the discovery of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.”

Laura moves her head closer to yours, “you’re going to have to explain this to me as we go you know.”

You rest your hand on her knee briefly and the smile she gives you takes your attention away from the speaker, who is luckily still trying to sort her accompanying powerpoint.

“If you wanna make notes I have a notebook and pen,” Laura whispers, fishing a small black moleskine out of her bag with a Silas Journalism pen. The notebook, when you open it, is filled with journalism notes in Laura’s bubbly handwriting. You choose a page Laura has filled on the left and keep your pen poised over the right.

The lecturer is amazing, she’s detailed enough without reducing you to tears of boredom, she jokes enough to set a room of academics laughing (except maybe Dr Glover but the fact that he stays awake is a miracle) and her work is cutting edge.

It doesn't help the fact you are distracted with Laura pressed up against you. 

Laura finds it less interesting, though her trying to hide it is endearing. The lecturer breaks for the provided interval refreshments, styrofoam cups of tea and coffee but your distraction wins out and you gesture Laura to stay sitting. 

You turn to her and angle your knees towards hers.“Lets go home.”

“You’re not enjoying yourself?”

“What? No, this was an amazing idea,” you reassure her, moving your hand up her leg from its place on her kneecap. “But. Let’s. Go. Home.” 

She understands what you’re saying instantly and her expression shows it. That secretive smile makes your stomach swoop and the rush hasn’t fully subsided even when she takes your hand and all but pulls you out of the room.

The corridors are deserted at this time of night, it feels eerie and it’s so quiet. The quietness lends itself to intimacy, as does the feel of her hand and the way she looks back at you every so often as you speed toward the exit.

Together you burst through the doors and onto the floodlit path outside. It’s gotten even colder in your absence and you can see your breath. Laura laughs beside you, bending double to regain her breath and you crane your head to look up at the stars.

You don’t notice Laura has moved until her arm wiggles around your waist and burns a warm hole into your jacket covered hip. “Carm?”

“What?”

She laughs at you, “I asked if you were cold.”

“No,” you reply absentmindedly, joining together stars in constellations you’ve known the name of for over a decade. Easily familiar, like freckles on your own skin. “Did you know, earlier this month astronomers found two stars orbiting each other so closely they touch? They say when they merge they’ll be 60 times heavier than the sun.”

Laura hugs you closer, presses her lips to your cold cheek. Your train of thought switches to your major, and all of a sudden the night doesn’t seem so fun. Just because you had enjoyed the lecture, enjoy your classes, doesn’t mean that space science is right for you. Your hobby, your private hobby becoming your job is a scary prospect, you’re not sure who you’d be if you lost interest in astronomy.

“What are you thinking about?” Laura asks.

“My major.”

Laura’s face turns from fond to anxious. “Oh god Carmilla I’m so sorry, bringing you here tonight was meant to take your mind off the whole major thing and-”

“Laura it’s fine,” you say, “I enjoyed myself, really I did.”

Trust Laura to talk through the awkwardness. “You’re cold aren’t you?”

“I don’t know where you got that idea from creampuff.” There, tension diffused.

“Because your teeth chattered and you just stamped your feet.”

“Maybe if you weren’t walking so slowly I wouldn’t be on my way to becoming an icicle.”

You don’t see Laura’s answering expression, she’s too busy racing off down the path.

There’s no way you’re going to run to catch up with her. She stops under one of the streetlights and waits for you but you evade her so she has to reel you in by one arm before you finally let her kiss you. There isn’t much let about it though, you can’t deny you’ve been thinking about it, perhaps traitorously, since that time after the journalism wine and cheese. Laura kisses you with the same sort of enthusiastic urgency as that night and you can’t help but respond. 

“Now we should definitely go home,” Laura breathes into your mouth.

You smirk at her, “lead the way then.”

***

“Wanna come in?” you ask when you get to your door.

“On a first date? Carmilla Karnstein, how presumptuous!” You know Laura’s joking by the fact she can barely make it through the word presumptuous without laughing, or by the fact she sails through your open door ahead of you.

You move instantly to shut the open window.

“It’s freezing in here!” Laura announces, but still takes off her coat, shoes, scarf and hat. She comes over to you and unzips your jacket, because your hands are so numb you can’t grip the zipper. “You’re freezing too!”

“I can think of a few ways to warm up.”

She smiles at you for a minute but her expression is mostly one of concern.

You roll your eyes at her, “I’ll be fine, I’ll just have a warm shower later.”

Laura looks up at you through those long eyelashes. There’s no way she doesn't know exactly what she’s doing, what she did when she breathed those words into your mouth a few minutes ago. “Or we could have a shower now? After all I wouldn’t want you to freeze to death.” 

“We, huh?” A delicious idea arrives in your head, fully formed.

“Uh-huh.”

You go to your dresser and take out a towel, going back to a confused looking Laura and wrapping the clean fluffy towel around her. Going in for a kiss seems like the most obvious thing in the world, using the towel to pull her close to you.

“Somehow, I don’t think most people shower fully clothed.” Laura makes it too easy.

There’s a myriad of smart retorts you could use in this situation, but you abandon all of them in favour of going back to sit on the bed and reaching behind your head to pull your band tee up and off.

She stays where she is, clutching the towel like a lifeline. You make absolutely sure she keeps eye contact with you as your hand creeps down your stomach and traces the outline of your jean button. Laura crosses the room in a millisecond, taking your hand away and unbuttoning your jeans herself. You notice the way her hands linger afterwards, returning your smirk.

It’s just the kind of reaction you wanted, your hands slide along her forearms, twisting at the last minute and pressing her back into the mattress, the towel spread out beneath her.

You surge forward to kiss her, her throat hums, your breath quickens in your ears. There is nothing patient or reserved about this kiss, nothing meek or chaste and even when you’re ready to pull away Laura follows your mouth, applying the perfect amount of pressure and frankly making you look like an amateur.

This is your show, and you’ve just been upstaged.

This time when you kiss, you bite her lip as you pull away, the lightest of grazes with your teeth. Your hand sneaks underneath her top.

Laura pulls away, a tiny mewling sound caught in the back of her throat. “Your hands are cold.”

You laugh, “I thought we’d already established this?”

Tugging, her top comes up over her head and you fling it across the room. It lands beside yesterday’s leather pants and you have to bury the sentimental part of you that savours that image.

With one hand snaked between your bodies you trail a long line down her sensitive stomach as her hips buck up into yours. She shivers the moment your fingers touch her.

“What do you expect me to do?” you manage in between feverish kisses. “Go warm them for you?”

“Asshole,” she stutters, the breath knocked out of her by your lips on her neck.

“If you’re going to keep going over previously established facts…”

Her eyes flutter shut the moment your hands begin to massage her breasts through the silk of her bra. You’ve begun to notice how she instinctively closes her eyes in moments like these, shame, it’s one hell of a view.You take in the sight of her up close, you hadn’t remembered the dusting of little moles on her skin, three along her shoulder in perfect alignment.

Your lips graze the junction of her neck and shoulder, her head tilts back and her body shudders, your fingers snaking behind her to release the clasp of her bra. Laura’s hands reach under your armpits and across your back to pull you closer, so close you can feel her heartbeat and smell the lavender of her body wash.

The world slows for a minute, the things you’re aware of in the room are the sound and sight of Laura’s abdomen rising and falling, the soreness of your knees kneeling on the comforter and the steady throb of your arousal like a second heartbeat.

You kiss your way downwards, lingering on the undersides of her breasts and down her sides, stopping at her hip. Both of your hands tangle in the waistband of Laura’s jeans, still watching you propped up on her elbows as you pull them down.Laura looks almost surprised to realise her panties have joined the rest of her clothing on the floor, and that the only thing remaining to her is your towel.

Almost like you’ve been planning this all along.

You lean down on your supporting forearm, letting her hand tangle in your hair as you kiss her upturned chin, palming over her breasts with your free hand with patience you don’t feel.

Kissing the side of Laura’s face by her ear, trailing your mouth lower where you can tease her earlobe using the tiniest hint of teeth so her hips jump underneath you. Her eyes are still closed when you slide off the bed, pulling a cushion onto the floor.

Laura scrambles to sit up the moment your hands close around her thighs. Her reaction when you tug her closer, looking up at her from your kneeling position on the floor, is entirely priceless. You use her surprise to your advantage, hooking both of her legs over your shoulders and turning your head to kiss your way up her thighs.

The springs of your bed groan as Laura’s head hits the mattress.

You respond by softly sucking a faint bruise, gauging Laura’s reaction. One of Laura’s legs hits you in the back when it flails. It makes a dull noise as it hits hard bone.

“Oh my god sorry, I didn’t mean-”

You shut her up by sucking another bruise, harder this time, closer and closer up her thigh. Laura forgets all about apologising as the first keen seems to tear from her mouth exactly the same time her legs and hips nearly jump out of your grip.

“I swear Carmilla Karnstein, if you slow down-”

If you remember rightly, there was a lot of swearing last time you did this. Before she can say another word you suck lightly on her clit the way you remember her liking before.

“Fuck.” Laura exhales a long breath.

Keeping your lips there, you use your tongue to flick over it but it’s not...you have to apply more pressure before Laura’s whining gets higher in pitch and she involuntarily pushes towards you.Her hips are on autopilot now, a hand thrown over her eyes. You think she must be biting it, because her long moans are coming out garbled.

You’re a little overwhelmed at how beautiful she is like this, you remember telling her before and as much as you had meant it then, it could not be truer now as you take in Laura’s flushed face and long eyelashes. She looks wrecked, in the best possible way, of course. Your hand slides down her body and finds her nipple which you try to roll between your fingers, you’ve never been good at multitasking.

The shift in angle must be good because Laura’s voice breaks mid swear. Her back arches leaving the bed completely all in an effort to get closer to you, which you can’t help but humour.  
You press in further, keeping your tongue steady and letting Laura take over.

“Oh my go-” Laura’s hips buck one last time and her back slumps back into the mattress. You tentatively place a kiss on Laura’s clit, but she twitches away and you settle for leaning forward to kiss her stomach.

Your kneecaps ache painfully but you ignore it, standing up and going to get yourself a towel.

There are many things about this situation that make you feel smug, one is Laura’s still audible breaths, two is the sheen of sweat making her skin glisten.

Three comes momentarily, when Laura gingerly swings her feet to the floor and tries to get up. Her legs wobble.

“Need any help there?”

Laura takes one wobbly step towards the bathroom. She turns around to face you. “You don’t need to look so pleased with yourself.”

You laugh. “Can’t I congratulate myself on a job well done? Speaking of being well done, who knew dishevelled was such a good look on you?”

Laura’s eyes narrow, the mock venom is impressive for someone dwarfed in a towel so big the ends drag on the floor. “Not your best line, Carmilla.”

“I’ll just have to try harder then, won’t I?”

“Overused and predictable,” Laura retorts, “3 out of 10,”

You get up, crossing to Laura in one normal step that took three of her wobbly ones and wrap your arms around your waist.

“You are not carrying me,” she tells you sternly.

The thought hadn’t even crossed your mind. Liar. “Wouldn’t dream of it cupcake, not when you’re doing such a good job of walking by yourself.”

Laura crosses to the bathroom in three long strides, and makes a show of almost shutting the door in your face. She crosses to your shower and turns it on, keeping an upturned hand to gauge the water temperature and looking at you expectantly. “Well?”

You shuck the rest of your clothes with no preamble, looking up from taking your socks off to see Laura staring at you. “You're looking at me very weirdly, you know.”

“Not weird,” Laura replies quickly, “So not weird, it’s just, wow, you know?”

“Me taking off my socks is wow?” You know what she meant, but her indignant huff is worth it.

She can outmanoeuvre you now though, because she completely ignores your teasing. “Are you coming in or not?” Her towel makes a pleasing twump on the tile as she steps forward into the cubicle.

You’re too busy watching her to move. Even though you’re freezing and could possibly contract bronchitis, again. The thought of having to spend weeks ‘resting’ spurs you to move, at least that’s what you tell yourself. Certainly not the combination of Laura and water droplets which trace the tracks down her body that your tongue made not ten minutes ago.

She doesn’t turn around when you finally get in.

Taking the shower gel, you lather it up in your hands, starting from the dip of her lower back and making soapy trails with both hands, gliding your hands round her hips and down to her bellybutton, leaving a thin film of foam.

She’s pressed against you shoulder to toe and every time she shifts her skin drags against your nipples and you have to stop yourself from crying out, desperate as you are. Part of you wants to push Laura against the shower wall and grind on her wet thigh until she gets the hint, but you’re all too aware of the quiet intimacy of your naked bodies pressed together and the way she’s letting you wash her. It’s without expectation, without pressure and you don’t want to spoil it.

Laura’s head tilts back on your shoulder. It’s too much of a temptation not to suck more marks into her neck, but your need for Laura to touch you is almost overwhelming.

You’re enjoying touching her too much though, enjoying seeing the evidence being swept away by the water so you have an excuse to touch her all over again.

She turns in your arms, picking up the shower gel again and pouring a generous amount. “My turn.”

Your stomachs brush and you gasp.

“Someone’s been very patient,” Laura says in a low voice that should be illegal.

She kisses you, insistent pressure that’s gone before you realise. When you open your eyes dazedly, she’s watching you. “But I think someone can wait a bit longer.”

You groaning only makes her look smugger. How the tables have turned, says a sullen voice in your head.

She starts at your neck, just under your ear, closed mouthed lingering kisses. You whine your disapproval.

The feel of Laura’s hands gliding down your back has you shivering despite the heat of the shower water. The fact you’d been cold earlier is such a distant memory now that there is heat furling in your belly at the slightest drag of Laura’s fingertips over your shoulder blades.

“Laura,” it comes out so loudly you can hear it above the hammering of the water hitting the shower cubicle.

She smiles, walking you back beyond the shower head so the spray hits your belly but your back is pressed firmly against cold tile. Laura has to come through the water to kiss you and it flattens her hair plastering it to her face in a way that should be adorable but actually does nothing to quell the rising urge to beg her.

Which is what she probably wants.

Laura’s mouth on your nipple is hotter than the shower water, hotter than the thrumming under your skin as her tongue laps at it.

“Laura, I’m done waiting, just-”

You can tell she’s in no rush, assured by the way it’s only taken her minutes to reduce you to babbling. The last time you had slept together you had only seen glimpses of this Laura, the one who knew exactly where to leave hard sucked in bruises of kisses on your neck and who digs her hands into your hips to hold you steady while you shudder.

Her lips still linger by your ear at the first touch brush of fingers on your clit.

You whine high in your throat, screwing your eyes shut and letting the feeling of Laura’s fingers wash over you.

“God,” Laura says reverently, pressing a kiss to your jaw.

“I think that’s meant to be my line sweetheart, if you hurried up,”

You hear Laura’s laughter in your ears like an echo, because it’s then that she catches just the right spot and it settles over you like an electrical current making your hips jump.

“Jeez, Carm you’re dripping.”

“We are in a shower,” your voice comes out mostly unaffected, if rapid breathing and gasping mid-sentence counts as unaffected.

“Do you ever shut up?” Laura doesn’t give you time to answer, kissing you with your reply still caught in your throat, making a point of sucking on your tongue softly.

It isn’t that Laura touching you isn’t perfect, the pressure of her fingers is just right, every downwards sweep making the muscles in your legs that are somehow still holding you up twitch. It’s just that it isn’t enough.

“Laura,” you have to suck your breath in through your teeth, “Laura, please.”

Laura’s arm wraps behind your back, steadying you, you hadn’t even noticed your legs had been slipping. “Why is it you only remember to say please when there’s something in it for you?”

“Right now there’s isn’t anything in it for-” you begin to grumble but get cut off, Laura is running her tongue over the skin that she had once bitten, reacquainting her teeth with the soft skin of your breast, the barest of soft scrapes. The flicker of pain makes you hiss as it gives way to a lingering ache, the best kind of reminder, that and the red bruise forming on your skin.

“Maybe if you want there to be something in it for you, you should ask,” Laura replies far too sweetly. It would be all too easy to reach down and get yourself off but there’s no way you’re going to miss out on a second of Laura touching you. Even if you have to ask.

That doesn’t mean you’re going to cave right away.

Which, of course, Laura takes this as a challenge.

Laura being so...go-getting? passionate? unabashed?; throwing herself into her essays or helping you with your major or eating pizza, was one of your favourite things about her, especially if the situation she was currently throwing herself into was sucking hard at your nipple and drawing perfectly light circles around your clit.

Her other hand creeps lower, dipping inside just the tiniest bit but not actually at all. You’re still going to have to ask.

You reach out and dance your fingertips across the hickies that litter Laura’s neck just to see her squirm, but she raises her head from where she is now laving her tongue across your collarbones and shakes her head. Fuck.

Her fingers begin move faster. “Please, ok, please Laura,” you think you’re going to fall down, “Laura fuck, fuck me, please don’t make me say it again.”

You feel Laura grin against your neck.

She glides her hand down from your wet hip all the way to mid-thigh, leaving your skin to tingle. In one smooth move your leg is bracketed against her side.

You still feel like you’re going to fall down. How can anyone stay standing while their girlfriend is running her hands all over the parts of your ass now not touching the wall?

When her fingers first slide inside you, everything narrows to that feeling- you can do nothing but cry out in response. Laura kisses the side of your face because at some point you’d pressed your hot cheek against the tile.

You’re only just aware enough to feel her thumb making calming swipes across your thigh.

There’s not an inch of you that can’t feel Laura’s fingers curl, her thumb teasing at your clit. You spent so long being stubborn you’re close already.

Laura probably knows this, you’re not exactly being quiet.

“Oh holy fuck,” it’s an appropriate reaction to Laura locking her arm and continuing to drive you crazy, resting her forehead against your shoulder.

You try to suck in air but it’s not enough, every breath comes out as a whine until Laura’s finger rolls just right over your clit and there’s no way you could stop yourself coming.

Making sure you’re watching, Laura brings her fingers to her mouth, looking up at you from your shoulder as her tongue darts out to taste them.

You’re lucky there isn’t some holy fuck quota in your mind because holy fuck.

Then you remember how easy she is to tease. “You do know we’re in a shower, right?”

“So you’d prefer if I stopped?”

You guess you deserved that.

“I didn’t think so,” Laura’s smug smile is back in full force. “Are you alright?”

Trust Laura to talk through the afterglow.

You can feel the remnants of your orgasm all the way down into your feet, through your jelly legs. “I think I’m going to fall over.” Not embarrassing at all Karnstein, well done.

Laura laughs, letting your thigh down and pulling you close. “I guess we better shower?”

It’s all the encouragement you need to grab the shower gel again and feel her skin beneath your hands.

You both come out of the shower laughing, watching with fond smiles as you grab your pyjamas and throw some to Laura. Her room is so far away, after all. Watching her means that minutes later she’s dressed and you...aren’t so it’s her turn to watch you dress from her place already snuggled under your comforter. You don’t think about going over to kiss her before you do, a frantic, ashamedly uncontrolled kiss that makes Laura’s hands stop while you savour her moans. Instead of fully pulling back you both smile against each other’s lips and if Laura’s soft gaze wasn’t so charmingly, stupidly beautiful you’d roll your eyes at the saccharine sweetness of it. Not that you would ever make fun of Laura in earnest.

You settle yourself in the tiny bed beside her.

Thank you, for tonight,” you say finding yourself really meaning it, “A lecture about an asteroid can’t be particularly interesting to you.”

“I’ve never seen you light up the way you do when you’re talking about space, I can tell it makes you happy and I wanna know what makes you happy....I want to get to know you, properly this time.”

You can’t help but kiss her mid-speech, there in the cocoon Laura’s made of your bed, limbs tangled together. Long after you’ve turned off the light you lie there, Laura’s head pillowed on your chest, feeling the way she seems to have instinctively wound her hand in the band t-shirt masquerading as a pyjama top.

You plant a kiss on the top of her head.

“Go to sleep Carm,” Laura murmurs sleepily.

You don’t really remember when you stopped looking at her and fell asleep.

***

“You do know we have to get up before three,” Laura says at noon the next day in between yet another round of dozing.

“Why, when we can stay here all day,” you ask, tangling your legs closer with Laura’s. Although she burrows closer to you she has this look on her face that manages to be ‘I don’t believe you’ and ‘get moving’ all at once. You think she’s right but you’ll never tell her that. “If I must.”

Laura goes back to her room for clothes begrudgingly, sending you a backward glance as if she doesn’t just live next door. You shower, replaying the memory of Laura bundled up in her coat and hat under that streetlight where you’d kissed last night. The muscles around your mouth begin to ache from overuse.

Laura talks the entire way across campus, happy chatter about the upcoming floor movie night the Ginger Brigade were hosting and about the classes she took in the buildings you pass. Somewhere past the Douglass building you take her hand, keeping your hand still in hers and waiting for her to pull away. She doesn’t pull away though, swinging your clasped hands between you, telling you about her journalism project while you make affirmative noises when she pauses for breath. Laura’s voice in your ear and her hand in yours goes some way to calm you but you’re still nervous.

“Ready?” Laura asks when you get there.

“...As I’ll ever be,” you reply.

Laura squeezes your hand in the elevator and you find all you can do is give her a tight lipped smile. When the elevator dings you wait a few seconds before getting out, stepping into the open plan office.

Laura drops your hand, “do you want me to come with?”

You shake your head, “it’s alright.” You get closer to the desk and your heart starts to pound. “I’m here to officially change my major.” That didn’t sound like a question, it sounds sure, like you know what you’re doing. You have to keep up appearances after all.

“Do you have your paperwork?”

You fish the wadded up document out of the inside pocket of your leather jacket and drop it onto the counter.

“This all seems to be in order,” the woman replies, reading the letter from your departmental advisor. “This will take about four working days to process Miss…” she looks at the form, “Karnstein, but we’ll notify you when the necessary changes have been made.”

You manage a thanks, turning to go back to Laura with relief coursing through you. It’s completely heady, unfamiliar and overwhelming, manifesting in a smile you know is slightly maniacal. Her hand finds yours again and you exit the building into the winter sunshine.

Laura’s smile matches yours, “how do you feel Space Science major?”

“Good,” you reply quickly, and it’s no lie.

Laura lets go of your hand, turning to walk backwards, “where to now? The coffee shop for a celebratory drink? Home?”

You reach for both of her hands, pulling her towards you so your lips meet ever so gently. More like a promise than a kiss. “Yeah, home, I think.”

 

 

The end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the response to this little series, thank you for the lovely comments and all the encouragement while I was finishing up this last part. A special thank you to feel, burrito-of-fury and darkavenger for all the answers to inane characterisation questions and cheerleading. 
> 
> More info on the space discoveries mentioned [here](http://www.wired.com/2014/12/most-amazing-space-discoveries-2014/%0A).
> 
> The space lecture scene was inspired by the Walt Whitman poem ['When I heard the learned astronomer'](http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/when-i-heard-learned-astronomer) .
> 
> Come say hi to me on tumblr at B-ellatores.tumblr.com
> 
> Edited slightly 3/9/15

**Author's Note:**

> I decided as I used the non-canon surname for Will in the last fic I would keep it here for continuity. The exam question is from a philosophy past paper. Con-crit welcome and you can find me on tumblr [here](b-ellatores.tumblr.com/).


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